Hollywood may have warned about the perils of striking up relationships with artificial intelligence, but one computer scientist says we may be missing a trick if we do not embrace the positives that human-machine relationships have to offer. Despite the travails of Joaquin Phoenix's introverted and soon-to-be-divorced protagonist in the 2013 movie Her, one professor says we should be open to the comforts that chatbots can provide. Tony Prescott, professor of cognitive robotics at the University of Sheffield, argues that AI has an important role to play in preventing human loneliness. Just as we develop meaningful bonds with pets, and have no qualms about children playing with dolls, so should we be open to the value of AI to adults, he says. "In an age when many people describe their lives as lonely, there may be value in having AI companionship as a form of reciprocal social interaction that is stimulating and personalised," Prescott writes in a new book, The Psychology of Artificial Intelligence.

Fox News contributor Dr. Marc Siegel unpacks a report suggesting a drug used primarily for seizures and behavioral issues could help treat autism. A New York speech pathologist is using improvisational theater, better known as "improv," to help young adults with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to develop their social skills. Bob Domingo, PhD, a speech language pathologist and assistant professor at Long Island University Post in Brookville, New York, is combining his skills and love of improv to help those with ASD. "Through improv, I am able to combine my knowledge of speech, language and communication with improv games and activities, to open up new, fun ways to communicate with others in developing spontaneous, unscripted'scenes' or conversations," Domingo told Fox News Digital in an interview. For individuals with ASD, symptoms can vary in severity.

How to Do It is Slate's sex advice column. Send it to Stoya and Rich here. As a sexually dominant-leaning female, I get a lot of instant gratification out of gorgeous women online telling me my assertiveness is impressive and sexy. When I have sex with women in my dreams, it's perfect. While my "traditional" long-term relationships have been with male-presenting people, I slept with several women in my early 20s--though I struggled to find satisfying connections.

Schwan Park, father of speed cuber Max Park, 21, tells Fox News Digital the story of his son's record-breaking achievement with Rubik's Cube: "We always knew he was good," he said. A young man from Cerritos, California, has beaten the world record for the fastest time to solve a Rubik's Cube. Park has been competing in Rubik's competitions since he was 10 years old -- and has defied the odds as a fierce competitor who also has severe autism. Park's father, Schwan Park, commended his son's record-breaking accomplishment and shared the young man's story with Fox News Digital. "We didn't realize how good he was," Park's father said, referencing the earlier years.

Co-founder & CEO at Square Off, a consumer robotics startup that specializes in developing and manufacturing of smart toys & games. The future of consumer robotics is bright and full of possibilities. As technology advances, robots are becoming more and more integrated into our daily lives, performing tasks that were once considered the exclusive domain of humans. From vacuum cleaners and lawnmowers to personal assistants and healthcare workers, robots are increasingly becoming a common sight in homes and businesses worldwide. One area where consumer robotics will soon be making a huge impact is in the home.

Originally published on Towards AI the World's Leading AI and Technology News and Media Company. If you are building an AI-related product or service, we invite you to consider becoming an AI sponsor. At Towards AI, we help scale AI and technology startups. Let us help you unleash your technology to the masses. No need for complex self-made Machine Learning Projects -- it's time to use APIs instead.

Self-driving vehicles, small robots on production lines, drones flying rescue missions, even robots that keep older people company: these are some of the proposed, not-so futuristic, ways robots will aid us. But all those scenarios won't be possible without trust. Humans need to feel secure enough around robots and robotic systems to rely on them. "Building human-robot trust into autonomous robotic systems like self-driving vehicles is key to the systems' success," said Ryan Williams, a Virginia Tech assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering. "As we readily observe in human teams, collaboration without trust is often ineffective or even counterproductive," he said.

The following is an excerpt adapted from AI 2041 by Kai-Fu Lee and Chen Qiufan. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Artificial intelligence can perform many tasks better than people can, at essentially zero cost. This simple fact is poised to generate tremendous economic value but also to cause unprecedented job displacement -- a wave of disruption that will hit blue- and white-collar workers alike. In the future, AI will be doing everything from underwriting our loans to building our homes, and even hiring and firing us.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the ability of machines to learn from experience, without explicit programming, in order to perform cognitive functions associated with the human mind. It is an overarching discipline -- a form of intelligence, a type of technology and a field of study. AI is already impacting almost every part of our lives, from the way we consume information and connect with our friends, to the services we access and the products we are sold. However, while the impact of AI is undeniable, the degree to which it influences us depends on a variety of factors such as the country we are born in, our gender, and even our age. Thus, even though AI is everywhere, the opportunity to benefit from it and shape it is not.

Building embodied autonomous agents capable of participating in social interactions with humans is one of the main challenges in AI. Within the Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) field, this objective motivated multiple works on embodied language use. However, current approaches focus on language as a communication tool in very simplified and non-diverse social situations: the "naturalness" of language is reduced to the concept of high vocabulary size and variability. In this paper, we argue that aiming towards human-level AI requires a broader set of key social skills: 1) language use in complex and variable social contexts; 2) beyond language, complex embodied communication in multimodal settings within constantly evolving social worlds. We explain how concepts from cognitive sciences could help AI to draw a roadmap towards human-like intelligence, with a focus on its social dimensions. As a first step, we propose to expand current research to a broader set of core social skills. To do this, we present SocialAI, a benchmark to assess the acquisition of social skills of DRL agents using multiple grid-world environments featuring other (scripted) social agents. We then study the limits of a recent SOTA DRL approach when tested on SocialAI and discuss important next steps towards proficient social agents. Videos and code are available at https://sites.google.com/view/socialai.