Remember when you were a kid and you told your friends that you totally loved your new computer, and some little luddite looked at you and said, "So why don't you marry it?" There was that brief moment when you thought your Commodore 64 could, in fact, make a nice spouse. If not, move along. If so, David Levy told participants at a conference last week that we would all be having loving relationships with robots by 2050, not just trysts in Massachussetts. He predicts that we'll have robots as sex toys within five years and true, deep relationships later on. Some robots already kiss, some seem to hate, but Levy says we'll have emotional relationships based on conversation by mid-century. Until that time, remember your C64, your first true love. She / he remembers you, you selfish jerk.

Having read the title above, we ask you: how do you feel? Titillated at the prospect or fearful for the little babies? Either way, if artificial intelligence researcher David Levy of the University of Maastricht is to be believed, we'll be consummating relationships with our anatomically correct Roombas by mid-century. Ironically, even though the city of Maastricht sits in free-livin' Netherlands, Levy predicts that Massachusetts will be first to legalize human-robot marriage due to its liberal attitude toward same-sex marriages. He envisions those early man-machine marriages falling victim to the same cultural taboos affecting interracial marriages. However, just as those are accepted over time, so will committed robot-hookups be seen as "normal" as the practice becomes more common. According to Levy, "once you have a story like 'I had sex with a robot, and it was great!' appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, I'd expect many people to jump on the bandwagon." Hear that Digg users? The cure to nerdonic-celibacy is all up to you.

[Via TG Daily]

The age of Big Brother everywhere is certainly upon us, and while we've seen (or at least heard of) tracking devices being implanted in the most unusual of places, it looks like Xerox is hoping to join the devilish fray. In an attempt to craft a demographic extractor to garner marketing dollars galore, a recently filed patent application spells out a system that utilizes software (and potentially hardware) to map users to "centroid vectors" which would determine a person's age, sex, and other "private" information simply based on their website visits. Interestingly, test cases are reportedly showing a respectable "75-percent accuracy rate" so long as a "sufficient number of pages were visited." Still, we can't imagine any tracing technology would be lawfully allowed behind the backs of law-abiding citizens (right?), but considering that even your TiVo has the potential to sell your soul to lucrative ad agencies, we wouldn't put it past 'em.

[Via ArsTechnica]

Robot tadpole mating. That's what a team of vertebrate physiologists at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. have been using to investigate the evolution of vertebrae. These little robot tadpoles -- lovingly named "Tadros" -- are modeled after the larvae of sea creatures called "sea squirts": each has an electronic eye, motor, computer brain, and gelatinous tail of varying lengths and stiffness. By racing the Tadros towards a light in 8-foot fish tanks and recording the results, the scientists have been able to carry out a simulated form of evolution by electronically mating each Tadros and producing a next-generation that shares the attributes of its two "parents." Over 10 generations of robot tadpole "relations," the scientists found that the tails became stiffer as the swimming performance improved. Apparently this stiffness accounts for only 40% of the improvements in swimming performance: further investigations will ascertain which factors account for the remaining 60%. Next, the team hopes to add a "hunter" to the tank which the Tadros can avoid using infrared sensors, to mimic the pressure sensitive organs of fish. Evolution emulating robot-tadpoles today, giant killer robot-frogs tomorrow?

[Thanks, Rod L.]