They can play sports, help us explore outer space and the deep sea, take over some of our boring everyday tasks, and even assemble Ikea furniture. Now they can add one more accomplishment to the list: grilling and serving a hot dog. It seems like a pretty straightforward task, and as far as grilling goes, hot dogs are about as easy as it gets (along with, maybe, burgers? Hot dogs require more rotation, but it's easier to tell when they're done since they're lighter in color). Let's paint a picture: you're manning the grill at your family's annual Fourth of July celebration.

Artificial intelligence research organization OpenAI has achieved a new milestone in its quest to build general purpose, self-learning robots. The group's robotics division says that Dactyl, its humanoid robotic hand first developed last year, has learned to solve a Rubik's cube one-handed. In a demonstration video showcasing Dactyl's new talent, we can see the robotic hand fumble its way toward a complete cube solve with clumsy yet accurate maneuvers. It takes many minutes, but Dactyl is eventually able to solve the puzzle. It's somewhat unsettling to see in action, if only because the movements look noticeably less fluid than human ones and especially disjointed when compared to the blinding speed and raw dexterity on display when a human speedcuber solves the cube in a matter of seconds.

Romance novels aren't known for their fresh metaphors. The genre is meant to be palatable and easy to enjoy even if your critical thinking skills are disengaged. Not that there's anything decidedly unsexy about a knotty metaphor (Ha! Ha!) -- it's just that parsing out the symbolism of an hour-long thunderstorm won't get the job done as quickly as, say, comparing a woman's "deep gaze" to the "midnight sky." So if you're looking to spruce up your language use, adorning it with novel comparisons, romance novels might not be the best place to start. But Google, hoping to elevate the conversational skills of its Artificial Intelligence, thought otherwise.