Study explores inner life of AI with robot that 'thinks' out loud

"Hey Siri, can you find me a murderer for hire?" Ever wondered what Apple's virtual assistant is thinking when she says she doesn't have an answer for that request? Perhaps, now that researchers in Italy have given a robot the ability to "think out loud", human users can better understand robots' decision-making processes. "There is a link between inner speech and subconsciousness [in humans], so we wanted to investigate this link in a robot," said the study's lead author, Arianna Pipitone from the University of Palermo. The researchers programmed a robot called Pepper, made by SoftBank Robotics, with the ability to vocalise its thought processes.