As anyone who endures a call with an automated customer "help line" quickly learns, robots have a frustrating inability to understand sarcasm. It only takes a few minutes of the pseudo-friendly automaton cycling through endless menu selections to trigger a lunge for the 0 button and a desperate plea for "AGENT!" We're even becoming accustomed to the idea that self-driving cars will soon lower our insurance rates and enable virtually uninterrupted texting during waking hours. Automation is now so ubiquitous that it's strange to think that we're entirely at ease with the robots, until we have to talk to them. But don't blame the machines.