If you believed everything you saw in the movies, you could be forgiven for thinking that artificial intelligence (AI) research had not moved on since the late 1950s. In almost all the Hollywood movies that feature AI or explore its implications, the unspoken assumption is that all researchers in the field are out to create surrogate humans or computerised brains that threaten our existence with their utterly impersonal view of events. This is true even of Spielberg's film AI which, despite being set in the future, takes a decidedly old-fashioned view of artificial intelligence. It is perhaps no surprise that it does, given that its screenplay is based on a short story published in 1969. But many other Hollywood movies persist in pushing this view of AI.

Robert Engelmore, a computer scientist and artificial intelligence pioneer, died March 25 during a family vacation in Kauai. He was a former executive director of the Knowledge Systems Laboratory who applied expert systems technology in scientific, industrial and military domains. Engelmore, 68, had been swimming in a rock-rimmed shoreline pool with his 5-year-old grandson, Jack, when they and other swimmers were overwhelmed by giant waves. Engelmore helped lift the child to safety but was pulled out to sea by currents. By the time lifeguards reached him, his heart had stopped beating.

From left, graduate students Ashutosh Saxena and Morgan Quigley and Assistant Professor Andrew Ng were part of a large effort to develop a robot to see an unfamiliar object and ascertain the best spot to grasp it. Stanford scientists plan to make a robot capable of performing everyday tasks, such as unloading the dishwasher. By programming the robot with "intelligent" software that enables it to pick up objects it has never seen before, the scientists are one step closer to creating a real life Rosie, the robot maid from The Jetsons cartoon show. "Within a decade we hope to develop the technology that will make it useful to put a robot in every home and office," said Andrew Ng, an assistant professor of computer science who is leading the wireless Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot (STAIR) project. "Imagine you are having a dinner party at home and having your robot come in and tidy up your living room, finding the cups that your guests left behind your couch, picking up and putting away your trash and loading the dishwasher," Ng said.

Douglas Hofstadter of Indiana University gave a Presidential Lecture in the Humanities and Arts. During the second Presidential Lecture of the academic year, Douglas Hofstadter, professor of computer and cognitive science at Indiana University, argued for the central place of analogy in cognition while using a bumper crop of analogies. Analogy is the "motor of the car of thought" and "the interstate freeway of cognition," said Hofstadter in a talk titled "Analogy as the Core of Cognition." Hofstadter, director of the Fluid Analogies Research Group (FARG) at the Center for Research on Concepts and Cognition at IU, has written on topics including artificial intelligence and poetry translation and is the author of the popular and Pulitzer Prize-winning Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (1979). Far from being a subset associated with problem solving--a tiny "Delaware on the map of cognition"--or a special variety of reasoning, analogy is the main event, Hofstadter asserted during an evening lecture Feb. 6 and during a discussion the following afternoon at the Humanities Center.

Five years ago, when I was trying to name this column, I found that all the clever technology titles involving bytes, bits and so forth had already been taken. So I thought: since I'm interested in how technology will affect us in years to come, why not "Practical Futurist"? It seemed humorous at the time: how many futurists are known for practicality? But within months, people were referring to me as a futurist. And thus I learned my first lesson about the profession: the way you become a futurist is simply to call yourself one. So at the end of July I couldn't resist the opportunity to join more than a thousand fellow futurists at the World Future Society's annual meeting in Toronto, Canada.

Your email address will not be published. Imagine checking in at the airport, buying a cup of coffee at a local café, even paying for your clothes or groceries at the store's register… all with a quick wireless scan of your smartphone. It's all possible today, thanks to a new type of tech called Near Field Communications (NFC). No receipts to sign and then stuff into your pocket. The spread of NFC technology is a win-win for the customer and the merchant alike.

Do you think Twitter elected Donald Trump?" a high profile tech exec asked me moments after Trump won. Of course, Twitter didn't cast a vote -- people all around the country chose to elect Trump -- but it's impossible to look at this election without analyzing the internet's role in shaping it. There were fake news stories trending on Facebook; Twitter bots that trolled users by the thousands; and Wikileaks emails that showed how hackers can influence the election. Tech platforms took on a different shape and wielded a new power. There has never been a more important time for tech leaders to own their platforms, understand the implications of algorithms, and engage in the challenging conversations about exactly what their roles are. Justin Kan, Y Combinator partner and Twitch founder, acknowledged an insular mindset in Silicon Valley, one that has made it harder for tech leaders to understand or relate to those who feel disenfranchised. New technologies like self-driving cars will have a huge impact on people who worked as cabbies or truck drivers -- and Silicon Valley wasn't prepared to offer solutions. "Are those people going to lose their jobs?

You don't have a big Hollywood marketing budget. How do you market your film? "Flatland was a different kind of film; strange, intellectual, bizarre," said Ladd Ehlinger Jr., director of the animated feature. "So I wanted something different to promote it." Chat room regulars may be familiar with the concept of a "chatbot."

According to www.ns-5.com, the world's first fully automated domestic assistant is about to go on sale. The Nestor Class 5 robot is six foot tall, looks vaguely human, and can do all sorts of housework, from washing-up to managing your finances. There's just one catch: the website promoting this amazing gadget is just a tease, a clever bit of advertising from 20th Century Fox to promote its movie, I, Robot, which is released in the UK next month. I, Robot is a sci-fi action thriller starring Will Smith, although the real star is the beautifully rendered NS-5 robot. Smith plays a detective investigating the murder of a famous scientist working for the fictional US Robotics company.

The application of Evolutionary Computation (EC) techniques for the development of creative systems is a new, exciting and significant area of research. There is a growing interest in the application of these techniques in fields such as: art and music generation, analysis and interpretation; architecture; and design. EvoMUSART 2006 is the third workshop of the EvoNet working group on Evolutionary Music and Art. Following the success of previous events, the main goal of EvoMUSART 2006 is to bring together researchers who are using Evolutionary Computation in this context, providing the opportunity to promote, present and discuss ongoing work in the area. The workshop will include an open panel for the discussion of the most relevant questions of the field.