robots

Watson and the best possible humans. Courtesy of International Business Machines Corporation. Unauthorized use not permitted.

Man versus machine on a quiz show

Instead of creating a special database, Watson's creators fed it encyclopedias, dictionaries, and works of literature and let the computer find connections on its own. Using 2,880 processor cores, it's able to answer quiz questions in seconds.

Welcome to tomorrow

Mike Pilewski writes: "It's 2010, and I still don't see any flying cars. And where's John Lithgow?"

Ready for the Olympics? Chinese and US androids fight it out.Photo by Sam Coniglio.

China plans Humanoid Olympics for 2010

The idea of robotic sport is not new: The 2010 RoboGames will be held in California in April. And robots already have their own football World Cup. But now the Chinese are planning to go one better, with the very first Humanoid Olympic Games.

BELL, the charming chatbot at Innocentenglish.com

The chatbot and I: Grammar and pragmatics - Difficult

What is it like to chat with a robot? To sound human, chat robots have to learn the complex ways of natural language communication. Decide for yourself whether chatbot BELL passes the test. Part three in our series on learning English online.