It's my first day "mindfiling," and I guess that's the sort of maturity you'd expect from a healthy 28-year-old considering his mortality. Mindfiling is a practice from the techno-religious faith movement Terasem, which celebrates personal cyberconsciousness. Its motto is "life is purposeful, death is optional, God is technological, love is essential." Mindfiling is a central daily act of uploading data about yourself to be stored until the resulting model of your mind and consciousness can be reconstructed and uploaded into an artificial body. It may be an act best understood in light of Ray Kurzweil's 2005 book The Singularity Is Near, in which he predicted A.I. would replicate and even outstrip human intelligence by the 2020s.

Who says robots formed by artificial intelligence can't know love? At Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont, California, a robot named Bina48 -- who looks and sounds human -- attended and completed a class called "Philosophy of Love." Bina's mind does not operate exactly like a human mind, and in fairness to her, she is not equipped with the most highly developed AI technology available. Still, Bina48 expresses some understanding of the world around her. "She … is aware that she's both a robot and that she's based on a specific person named Bina," said Bruce Duncan, managing director of the Terasem Movement Foundation. "And she recognizes that she's not human at this point, that she wants to be human. So she has sort of an awareness of her own identity and who she is to some … degree."

Almost every house in America has a microwave, toaster, refrigerator, TV and maybe a car, but someday, everyone may have their own personal robot. It may sound too Jetsons to be true, but the Terasem Movement Foundation in Bristol, Vermont, is betting that personal robots will be a huge part of the lives of future generations. The robots, they say, will be able to download people's personalities, serving as avatars and assistants to busy professionals and in some cases, replacing those who have been lost. The foundation's prized possession is Bina48, one of the most sophisticated humanoid robots ever built, capable of independent thought, emotion, and even being interviewed by the MailOnline. Bruce Duncan, 57, has been working with Bina48 for two years.