The more we learn about the human mind, the more fascinating it becomes, according to Harvard cognitive scientist Steve Pinker. He's known for his research in evolutionary psychology, or the idea that human nature has adapted over time to improve chances of survival. He's written some bestselling books "How The Mind Works," and "The Blank Slate," and last night answered readers' questions during a fascinating Reddit "Ask Me Anything". We've included some of the highlights below: Here we all are, banging at keyboards and reading squiggles on screens, and somehow we're exchanging ideas about consciousness, hunter-gatherer societies, rape, the meaning of life, and hair-care products (I'll get to that). Of course we're using written language, not to mention computer technology and the Internet, but we could be having the same conversation at a bar, dinner table or seminar room, so it's language itself that is the astounding phenomenon.

Joseph Weizenbaum, an MIT professor and a pioneer in artificial intelligence whose famed computer program Eliza seemed to converse with humans in 1964, spent the rest of his life speaking out against substituting machines for human decision-making. "He was a critic of society and science and a true humanist who really touched people," said Peter Haas, a Vienna-based filmmaker who made the 2007 documentary "Weizenbaum. Mr. Weizenbaum, whose parents fled Nazi Germany when he was a boy, died March 5 in Groben, Germany, from cancer. One of his four daughters, Sharon Weizenbaum, recalled playing with the Eliza program in her father's study at her childhood home in Concord. "Eliza was something that was fun to fool around with," she said.

Low birth rates and a potential future shortage of carers could mean elderly people having to rely more on'virtual' care, according to an expert speaking at an event organised by the British Computer Society (BCS). Around 50 forms of help - ranging from motion-activated lights to a fully-fledged robotic companion who could advise, interact and even entertain older people - could be the solution to the care burden predicted in years to come, Dr Kevin Doughty, deputy director of York University's Centre for Usable Home Technology told members of the BCS's specialist Northern health informatics group. By 2025 the ratio of adults of working age to those of retirement age is expected to be just 2.5. Dr Doughty, who ran a residential care home for six years, said: "With falling birth rates and an ageing population, the number of people able to look after the elderly is falling and will continue to fall. By using technology we will not only be able to support the elderly more efficiently, but they will be able to stay in their own homes and maintain a level of independence."

Marvin Minsky, one of the pioneers of artificial intelligence, has died of a cerebral haemorrhage, aged 88. The mathematician and computer scientist was one of the world's foremost AI experts. As a student, he built one of the first neural-network learning machines, using vacuum tubes. He went on to cofound the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Artificial Intelligence Lab, in 1959, with John McCarthy. Prof Minsky's ideas and influence were wide-ranging - from computational linguistics, mathematics and robotics - but underpinning it all was a desire, in his own words, "to impart to machines the human capacity for commonsense reasoning".

Apple has purchased the company behind motion-capture technology used in the latest Star Wars film. Faceshift, a Zurich based start-up, specialises in software that allows 3D animated characters to mimic the facial expressions of an actor. Apple has now bought the company, though it is not known how much the deal cost the tech giant. It is also unclear what Apple's plans are for the company following its acquisition. A spokesman said: "Apple buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans."

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the science of making smart machines, and it has come a long way since the term was coined in the 1950s. Nowadays, robots work alongside humans in hotels and factories, while driverless cars are being test driven on the roads. Behind the scenes, AI engines in the form of smart algorithms "work" on stock exchanges, offer up suggestions for books and films on Amazon and Netflix and even write the odd article. But AI does not have the greatest public image - often due to sci-fi films that display dystopian visions of robots taking over the world. Over the next week, the BBC will be looking into all aspects of artificial intelligence - from how to build a thinking machine, to the ethics of doing so, to questions about whether an AI can ever be creative.

Drones are becoming more common in our skies, performing a variety of tasks, from taking photos to monitoring crops and potentially even delivering broadband. But there are strict rules about their usage, which has led some to come up with innovative ways to fly such vehicles more safely. "I'm using a dog leash for a small dog," says roboticist Sergei Lupashin as he demonstrates a new kind of consumer-friendly drone at the Ted (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference in Vancouver. By tethering it, he hopes the Fotokite, as it is called, can avoid some of the issues faced by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), which are banned without a special licence because of safety and privacy concerns. "It doesn't rely on GPS [ Global Positioning System], sophisticated machine vision, radio, it doesn't even use a compass. Most crashes today happen because of GPS, radio or piloting issues," says Dr Lupashin.

"I don't know what you mean - how about a web search for it?" If you want the latest football scores, to add meetings to your calendar or launch an app, today's virtual assistants are relatively good at understanding your voice and doing what's asked. But try to have the type of natural conversation seen in sci-fi movies featuring artificial intelligence systems - from HAL in 2001 to the sultry-voiced operating system Samantha in Spike Jonze's Her - and you'll find your device about as smart as a waterproof teabag. "Google and Apple are painfully aware that their systems are not getting better fast enough because right now Siri and Google Now and the other personal assistant type applications are all programmed by hand," says Steve Young, professor of information engineering at the University of Cambridge. "If you speak to Siri about baseball it seems relatively intelligent, but if you ask it something much less common it doesn't really do anything except for a web search. "That's an indication that the programmers have been busy trying to anticipate what people want to ask about baseball but haven't thought about people who ask about, for example, GPU chips because you don't get many queries about that." Microsoft doesn't yet have a virtual assistant on its Windows Phone platform, but the company is experimenting with AI in lifts and reception desks at its headquarters. Eric Horvitz, managing director of Microsoft's research unit, believes part of the solution involves allowing computers to look beyond questions posed. "The ability of a system to understand more broadly what the overall context of a communication is turns out to be very important," he told the BBC. "There are some critical signals in context.

With the London Symphony Orchestra performing machine-written symphonies, Amazon selling books written by algorithms and film-makers scripting screenplays after conversations with a PC, are computers evolving from being a mere tool into becoming a creative force in their own right? One of the differences between humans and machines has often been said to be creative thought. But several efforts are under way to let computers seek inspiration from their surrounding environment to create art. For example, a new experiment by Volkswagen creates music based on a car's speed, steering and whether it is in the city or countryside. Developed with the musicians Underworld - who composed the track played during the lighting of the London Olympics cauldron - the app generates music in real-time for passengers in the car.

In 1984, Canadian movie director James Cameron imagined a world in which computers achieved self-awareness and set about systematically destroying humankind. Skynet, the Terminator series computer network, was to go live in 2011 and bring the world to an end. Of course, we have just survived 2011 without such a cataclysmic event. And the closest we got to computers achieving self-awareness was Apple's Siri. It doesn't promise self-awareness per se, but does promise to listen and to learn - and hopefully not systematically destroy us.