Artificial Intelligence

A research group known as the Information & Telecommunications Research Organization (情報通信研究機構) recently announced that they have been the first to develop a robot that can not only learn how to speak, but also learn what words mean and carry out actions based on its acquired vocabulary.

In a recent report by World Business Satellite, project leader Iwahashi demonstrates in this video clip (darn Real Player!) how the robot learns worlds such as "blue", "block", "place on top" etc. The robot can then answer to questions such as "whats on top of the blue block?" and then carry out instructions such as "place elmo on top of the blue block" etc.

When new words are spoken to the robot, as it does not know the meaning initially, it will just shake its head and tell your to "f*** off" (joke).

I dont follow the robot scene closely so I'm no expert but according to this group, robots up until now have only been able to remember nouns, shapes and then point to those shapes.

In theory, one could teach this newly developed robot things like "Jon", "enemy", "gun", "trigger", "pull", "kill"...
My guess is that the Japanese are going to be the first to come up with the Terminators.

If you had a robot that looked like Motoko from Ghost in the Shell, what would be the first thing you ask her to do?