Ramona isn’t like other robots. Created in 2001 by artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and author Raymond Kurzweil, Ramona is an Aquarius who likes tight clothes, cannoli and Australian sheepdogs, but that’s not what sets her apart from the proverbial robot pack. Ramona is a rock star. Only 7 years old, ...

I discovered last week that I can read my columns in German, courtesy of German Google and its automated translator. I don’t speak a word of German — though I have taken a fancy to the translation of my byline as “der technokrat” — but it got me thinking about ...

There’s a British joke from the 1960s about the Irish airline Aer Fungus offering its first completely automated flight without a human pilot. After the passengers board, the joke goes, a voice comes over the loudspeaker saying, “welcome to the first-ever computerized, pilotless flight. There is no one in the ...

Watching an episode of “Grey’s Anatomy” or “Scrubs” gives the impression that today’s doctors-in-training and their supervisors devote about 98 percent of their time to styling their hair, sleeping with their coworkers, sleeping with their patients, talking to their coworkers about sleeping with their patients, talking to their patients about ...

Who would do better on your midterms: you or your laptop? Well, your laptop would have instant access to billions of pieces of useful information — the dates of every Civil War battle, the conjugation of the German verb for “to bleach,” the most stable conformational isomer of trans-1-ethyl-2-methylcyclohexane — ...

A partial transcript of my roommate Alexis’ late-night session with psychotherapist ELIZA:ELIZA: Hello, I am Eliza.ALEXIS: Hello, I am Alexis.ELIZA: Do you believe it is normal to be Alexis?ALEXIS: Yes.ELIZA: I see.ALEXIS: You’re not very helpful.ELIZA: We were discussing you, not me.ALEXIS: Okay.ELIZA: Come, come, elucidate your thoughts.ALEXIS: I really ...