For decades robots have won the affection of humans in pop culture -- whether it was R2-D2 in Star Wars or Rosie the Robot in the Jetsons. But as popular as these machines have been on screen, we haven't seen similar robots enter our everyday lives. Now that appears on the verge of changing as the technology sector increasingly invests in robotics. Funding to private robotics companies doubled in 2015 to reach a record high of 587 million, according to CB Insights. And robots were the dominant theme at a conference Amazon held earlier this week to encourage inspiration and creativity in tech's hottest fields.

The District of Columbia is infamous for some of the political issues that make it distinct from other areas of the country. Its residents only have a non-voting delegate in Congress, for example. And its crippled subway system is uniquely hobbled by the fact that it relies on money from Maryland and Virginia, not just funding from riders and D.C.'s government. So it's no surprise to learn that not long from now, D.C. residents may be able to add drone delivery to their "left out on" list. Many online shoppers are waiting eagerly for the day that they'll be able to order something on Amazon.com and have it dropped off, via drone, on their front stoop.

The Federal Aviation Administration is predicting a bright future for the growth of the commercial and hobbyist drone industries after final regulations are approved. In an aerospace forecast report released Thursday, the FAA said unmanned aircraft systems will be the "most dynamic growth sector within aviation." It noted that venture capitalists have already sunk "considerable" funds into the industry in hopes of building early market share. Already, the FAA predicted that 1.9 million hobbyist drones will be sold this year, along with more than 600,000 commercial drones. The FAA predicts that 4.3 million hobbyist drones could be sold per year by 2020.

Vizio is ditching the old-fashioned remote control in favor of a 6" tablet with their new P-Series televisions. Next week TV set manufacturer Vizio will debut a new kind of TV set that ditches the familiar remote we've known to love, hate and lose, with instead a supplied 6-inch tablet. The controller acts like a traditional, internet connected tablet, except that it also turns up and down your volume, changes channels, opens and closes apps and brings in new ones. And if you lose it--no problem. You just download the new Vizio app to your phone, and use it there.

When Ray Kurzweil met with Google CEO Larry Page last July, he wasn't looking for a job. A respected inventor who's become a machine-intelligence futurist, Kurzweil wanted to discuss his upcoming book How to Create a Mind. He told Page, who had read an early draft, that he wanted to start a company to develop his ideas about how to build a truly intelligent computer: one that could understand language and then make inferences and decisions on its own. It quickly became obvious that such an effort would require nothing less than Google-scale data and computing power. "I could try to give you some access to it," Page told Kurzweil.

All the stuff early Google mastered. With that mission accomplished Google has moved on to the next challenge. I haven't yet seen the talk by Jeff Dean - but it is interesting that I tweeted out the exact same thing a few days ago on Twitter: "IMO Google's long term goal is not just to "Organize the world's information" but to "Understand" it using #AI:

Computing was some pretty exciting stuff for those of us back in the 80s who still remember the first time we booted up our 386DX. While nobody could really say what the advantages of the "DX" were, better at math or something, we still ponied up the extra 200 USD to pick up that 386DX 16Mhz along with a Super VGA graphics card, then hooked that bad boy up to CompuServe via our lightning fast 14,400 baud U.S. Robotics "Sportster" modem. That was well before Al Gore created the Internet, and a lot has changed since then. So are we, so let's go through and define some of these terms and what they mean for investors. "The Cloud" – The idea here is that instead of purchasing applications then installing them onto a computer, you lease the applications on demand and access them over the internet.

Reinforcement learning, a key Google DeepMind algorithm, could overhaul news recommendation engines and greatly improve users' stickiness. After beating a Go Grandmaster, the algorithm could become the engine of choice for true personalization. My interest for DeepMind goes back to its acquisition by Google, in Jan. 2014, for about half a billion dollars. Later in California, I had conversations with artificial intelligence and deep learning experts; they said Google had in fact captured about half of the world's best A.I. minds, snatching several years of Stanford A.I. classes, and paying top dollar for talent. Acquiring London startup DeepMind was a key move in a strategy aimed at cornering the A.I. field.

It's Friday September 14, 2046, and you are at the airport getting an alert from your car that your 10,000 mile service is due, but something peculiar comes with your alert. It's a question: your car asks you if you wish to have the service taken care of within the next 10 days, or after. Your car's smart system contacts the car dealer's smart system and arranges everything, but first it checks your calendar and figures out if you are out of town on any particular day. It discovers you will be traveling for the day on Monday the 24th, so it books your car service to the airport from the service department, your airline and hotel reservations, and your dinner reservations with your client. It also updates your social profiles for you while sending you relevant information about where you are going, whom you know there, whom you have not been in touch with for a while that may be in the area, and a plethora of other intelligence useful for you.

We all have those friends or colleagues who are the "go to" person for tough problems, whether it's car repairs or career advice. The difference between the "go to" person and everyone else is experience and a kind of raw talent. In fact, the very best – the experts – leverage those qualities to innovate. In Malcolm Gladwell's Blink, he recites example after example of experts at the top of their field making genius decisions in an instant. Despite constant advances in technology, the idea that a machine could ever achieve that expert level seems unfathomable. Even technologists, who are accustomed to accepting everything new, find themselves doubting the ultimate potential of artificial intelligence (AI).