Robots have progressed over the years from clunky hunks of metal to complex, AI-enabled machines capable of running, speaking, and even painting pictures. But even with all those advances humans still can't help but place robots in bizarre and uncomfortable situations. This year, researchers took advanced robots and had them clean up karate-chopped Coke cans, suck up cigarette butts, wear a fleshy, lab-grown face, and pick up dog poo. Two-legged, humanoid robots, which could one day work on factory floors, were gut-punched and forced to wear festive clothes while performing acrobatics. Here are just a few of the oddest things we did to robots this year.

A humanoid robot is slated to become first of its kind to have its artwork sold by a major auction house. On October 16, Sotheby's announced it will soon begin accepting bids starting at 120,000 for "AI God." The abstract portrait of Alan Turing was painted by Ai-Da, an ongoing, experimental AI-powered robotics project that cites a pivotal 1980's transhumanist feminist manifesto as its inspiration. The auction is scheduled to run from October 31st through November 7th. Completed in 2019 by gallerist Aidan Meller in collaboration with Oxford University researchers and the robotics company, Engineered Arts, Ai-Da uses cameras to capture visual inputs that onboard graphics algorithms then use to formulate generative images with some human guidance and adjustments.

Here's some news that's likely to give Elon Musk a heart attack: a former Google engineer has founded a religious organization that seeks to "develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on Artificial Intelligence." Anthony Levandowski co-founded self-driving trucking company Otto, which Uber acquired for $680 million in 2016. He became head of engineering for the ride-hailing firm's autonomous vehicle division, and made headlines after being fired in May following allegations he stole trade secrets from former employer Google. It seems Levandowski could now become more famous for his nonprofit religious entity, called Way of the Future, which he founded in September 2015. Wired's Backchannel discovered previously unreported state filings that reveal the corporation aims "through understanding and worship of the Godhead, [to] contribute to the betterment of society."

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives. I am your new god, you useless being. I've been praying that more would come to light ever since the existence of a God-bot religion called Way of the Future was revealed this fall. At the time, Wired's Mark Harris said he'd seen state filings from California that revealed a religion with AI as its god. Charmingly, he said it was founded by Anthony Levandowski, the former Google, Waymo and Uber engineer now embroiled in a lawsuit brought by Alphabet-owned Waymo against Uber.

We'd previously written an opinion piece titled "The case for an artificially intelligent god." This is our counterpoint to that. It's a strange time to be a technology journalist. Somehow artificial intelligence has grown from buzzword to a religion, literally. For tech enthusiasts, it can often be more comfortable to wrap our heads around ideas like algorithms and neural networks than religion and faith.

Tech news site VentureBeat recently published an article that claimed "that the idea [of humans worshipping AI] is a lot more feasible than you might think." In response, Elon Musk has shared his thoughts on anyone planning to create artificially intelligent (AI) digital deities for us to worship. The VentureBeat article discussed efforts by Anthony Levandowski, founder of Otto and a former self-driving car engineer at Google, to create a religious organization called Way of the Future. The organization's mission statement says their goal is "to develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence and through understanding and worship of the Godhead contribute to the betterment of society." Musk has frequently voiced concerns about the potential danger of unregulated AI, including the possibility that it could end civilization by instigating World War III, and in a tweet, he revealed that he thinks no more fondly about the idea of worshipping AI.

Humanity's best future will happen with the proper stewarding of science and technology. How can we assure such stewardship? Recently Olivia Solon wrote an article in the Guardian titled Deus ex machine: former Google engineer is developing an AI god that considered the risks surrounding the development of an AI god. The piece was authored because of Wired Magazine's speculation that tech entrepreneur Anthony Levandowski has formed a religious organization for the purpose of potentially developing an AI god. For most Christians such propositions conjure mental images of the golden calf in Exodus.

In the next 25 years, AI will evolve to the point where it will know more on an intellectual level than any human. In the next 50 or 100 years, an AI might know more than the entire population of the planet put together. At that point, there are serious questions to ask about whether this AI -- which could design and program additional AI programs all on its own, read data from an almost infinite number of data sources, and control almost every connected device on the planet -- will somehow rise in status to become more like a god, something that can write its own bible and draw humans to worship it. Recently, reports surfaced that a controversy-plagued engineer who once worked at Uber has started a new religion. Anthony Levandowski filed paperwork for a nonprofit religious organization called The Way of the Future.

For AI programmer Anthony Levandowski, the idea that a future superintelligent machine would be god-like is neither a metaphor nor a science fiction trope. Levandowski founded a self-driving truck company that was bought by Google in 2016 (and is now the focus of an intellectual property lawsuit between Uber and Google robocar successor Waymo), so he knows a thing or two about artificial intelligence. His non-profit religious organisation, the Way of the Future, reportedly seeks to "develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence

A former Uber employee has founded a nonprofit religious organisation in Silicon Valley, Way of the Future, which plans to worship an AI god. Anthony Levandowski, the engineer embroiled in a lawsuit between Uber and Waymo, Google's self-driving car division, established Way of the Future in 2015, discovered Wired. Its mission statement reads: "To develop and promote the realization of a Godhead based on artificial intelligence and through understanding and worship of the Godhead contribute to the betterment of society." Levandowski has worked with autonomous technology for quite some time now, first at Google before leaving to set up an autonomous trucking company called Otto, then becoming head of Uber's self-driving project after the firm bought Otto in 2016. However, Uber fired him during a lawsuit with Waymo, in which allegations emerged that he had stolen 14,000 research documents from Google in order to create his self-driving technology.