Artificial Intolerance

For five months in 2011, a robot wheeled around an office building at Carnegie Mellon University delivering bananas, cookies, and other afternoon snacks to workers. With wide-set eyes and a pink mouth, Snackbot had a friendly look, but it was prone to mistakes. Long delays in conversations with workers were common. Sometimes the system running Snackbot froze. Still, the workers became comfortable with Snackbot.