Teaching machines to predict human behaviors

I've written a few times recently about various projects that are helping develop robots capable of learning by watching how a task is performed. The machines typically observe something like a YouTube video in their attempt to pick up the skill, but the tasks have generally been quite manual in nature, such as the correct handling of kitchen utensils. A recent study from researchers at MIT set out to test whether machines could also use a similar method for picking up something so intuitively human. The researchers were hoping to train robots to be able to instinctively predict how an encounter with a human might unfold. It's the kind of intuition that we develop subconsciously as a result of our lifetime of experience.