Meet Facebook's Experimental Droidlet A.I.

Between Facebook's core social network product and apps like Messenger and WhatsApp, Mark Zuckerberg's tech giant has undeniably changed the way people communicate. Could it next help change the way we communicate with robots? In 2021, the idea of being able to communicate with artificial intelligence through natural language is nowhere near as science fiction as it once was. Whether it's Amazon's Echo voice assistant or the voice bots we interact with when you phone your bank, A.I. today means that machines can do a pretty good job of understanding what humans are asking for, without the human in question having to do much to modify the way that they're speaking. Partly because most robots are still used in industrial or lab-based settings, where there's not quite the same requirement for them to be accessible to everyday users, robot interactions remain more opaque in their operation.