Ms. Saya, a perky receptionist in a smart canary-yellow suit, beamed a smile from behind the "May I Help You?" sign on her desk, offering greetings and answering questions posed by visitors at a local university. But when she failed to welcome a workman who had just walked by, a professor stormed up to Saya and dished out a harsh reprimand. "You're so stupid!" said the professor, Hiroshi Kobayashi, towering over her desk. "Eh?" she responded, her face wrinkling into a scowl. "I tell you, I am not stupid!"

On any other soccer field it might be considered a disaster. The forwards keep getting calls against them. The goalie falls over when the ball isn't even near the net. As for the striker -- well let's just say he won't be rushed when he lines up to kick the ball. It's RoboCup 2013 and what it is championing is robotic technology and artificial intelligence.

The Chinese room argument is a thought experiment of John Searle (1980a) and associated (1984) derivation. It is one of the best known and widely credited counters to claims of artificial intelligence (AI)---that is, to claims that computers do or at least can (someday might) think. According to Searle's original presentation, the argument is based on two key claims: brains cause minds and syntax doesn't suffice for semantics. Its target is what Searle dubs "strong AI." According to strong AI, Searle says, "the computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind, rather the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to understand and have other cognitive states" (1980a, p. 417). Searle contrasts strong AI with "weak AI."

'Hello, this is a Tinder robot. Would you like to meet for a romantic candlelit date?' Robots clean our floors, mow our lawns and (at least in Japan) check you into hotel rooms and carry your luggage. So why not turn over that pesky problem of setting up a date to a bot? Vancouver developer and Tinder user Justin Long did just that, creating software that puts the popular dating app Tinder on auto pilot. Tired of the time he spent swiping right and left to say yes or no on the popular app, Long combined facial recognition and artificial intelligence to let his bot – dubbed Tinderbox – prescreen potential dating partners.

At a recent conference here of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, robots competed to rescue dummies in a disaster mock-up, while a robot named George greeted attendees as they arrived. Dozens of teenagers -- a next generation of roboticists -- showed off their robot creations in a contest. Presentations by scientists ran from the esoteric ("Online Semantic Extraction by Backpropagation Neural Network with Various Syntactic Structure Representation" by Heidi Yeung of the City University of Hong Kong) to the practical topic du jour ("Intelligent Technology for Adaptive Aging," by the University of Michigan's Martha Pollack).

On the eve of the Apple WWDC conference, some of the leading names in tech say bots may soon replace the apps we know and love. Ari Roisman, CEO and cofounder of Glide, a video-messaging app that hopes to capitalize on the coming transition away from texting and towards a voice-and-video interaction future. SAN FRANCISCO - Typing is so ... 20th century. And soon texting is likely to join it in that same communication dustbin. That's a view Ari Roisman, CEO and cofounder of video messaging app Glide, shares with some of the titans of tech ranging from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Apple is set to unveil a new and improved Siri, the personal digital assistant, and widen its reach, to Mac computers and third-party apps. Philips Hue is now compatible with Apple Home Kit, meaning you can use Siri to control your lights. LOS ANGELES -- Siri is expected to expand beyond the iPhone and iPad to third-party apps and Macs, a move designed to hike the usefulness and IQ of Apple's personal digital assistant. Analysts who cover Apple predict an expanded role for Siri will be one highlight of Apple's Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, which begins Monday in San Francisco. Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

Japanese roboticist Hiroshi Ishiguro displayed one of his androids on Sunday at the SXSW Interactive Festival. The android, which is modeled after Ishiguro, held an autonomous conversation in Japanese on stage with an Ishiguro associate. Professional South Korean Go players review a match after another bout lost to a computer in the Google DeepMind Challenge Match. AUSTIN – Science and technology have always cut with double-edged swords, capable of both propelling humanity to new achievements while threatening us with potential catastrophe. That chilling theme was explored by two leading technologists at SXSW Interactive, a festival that has seen its share of humans rising up against the machines.

In this handout image provided by Google, South Korean professional Go player Lee Sedol reviews the match with other professional Go players after the fourth match against Google's artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, during the Google DeepMind Challenge Match on March 13, 2016 in Seoul. Lee Sedol and DeepMind brought vastly different brains to their five-game Go match at a Seoul hotel this past week -- one made of flesh and blood and the other of bits and metal. Yet the South Korean and the artificial intelligence machine from Google's U.K. unit earned their respective victories in a Four Seasons meeting room thanks in part to a common tactic: Surprise. In doing so, both played an ancient Asian game according to an ancient Asian maxim. "The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy," Sun Tzu wrote in The Art of War.

In this handout image provided by Google, South Korean professional Go player Lee Se-Dol puts his first stone against Google's artificial intelligence program, AlphaGo, during the third Google DeepMind Challenge Match on March 12, 2016 in Seoul, South Korea. SAN FRANCISCO -- IBM's Watson computer now has company at beating humans in very complicated games. Google's artificial intelligence machine, called DeepMind, this week defeated a human champion three straight times at the ancient board game of Go. The feat has been viewed widely as a huge breakthrough in artificial intelligence, one that intensifies the high-stakes race among tech giants to develop ever-smarter machines. "DeepMind is doing what appears to be thinking -- that's what has everybody jazzed," says Jonathan Crane, chief commercial officer of IPsoft, a startup that makes an AI-based customer-service product.