Moviegoing experience has told me that Sony's recently established "Intelligence Dynamics Laboratory" isn't a good idea. Sony has set a goal - the creation of a realistic conversation partner robot in five years. Mr. Doui, father of the Aibo, has even been brought in, along with 350 computers to "compute 1 trillion calculations per second." Let's hope Sony teaches the robots English, too, otherwise we'll all be hosed. Thankfully, Sony will be building the new robots based on the 2 foot QRIO, so when they become self-aware, they'll be a good 3-4 feet shorter than us Americans. PUNT.
Read - Story (Japanese) [Yomiuri]