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"An algorithm has no tastebuds; a neural net never gets the munchies. So can a robot brain really tell us what we'll want to eat? The question is whether AI systems will be able to excel in the sensual, creative work of tasting and developing new foods - and what we stand to gain or lose by inventing foods that really have our number."

"A robot that can decide whether or not to inflict pain has been built by roboticist and artist Alexander Reben from the University of Berkeley, California. The basic machine is capable of pricking a finger but is programmed not to do so every time it can."

"For now, however, Hammond tries to reassure journalists that he's not trying to kick them when they're down. He tells a story about a party he attended with his wife, who's the marketing director at Chicago's fabled Second City improv club. He found himself in conversation with a well-known local theater critic, who asked about Hammond's business. As Hammond explained what he did, the critic became agitated. Times are tough enough in journalism, he said, and now you're going to replace writers with robots? "I just looked at him," Hammond recalls, "and asked him: Have you ever seen a reporter at a Little League game? That's the most important thing about us. Nobody has lost a single job because of us.""

"Unskilled manual laborers have felt the pressure of automation for a long time - but, increasingly, they're not alone. The last few years have been a bonanza of advances in artificial intelligence. As our software gets smarter, it can tackle harder problems, which means white-collar and pink-collar workers are at risk as well. Here are eight jobs expected to be automated (partially or entirely) in the coming decades. Call Center Employees call-center Telemarketing used to happen in a crowded call center, with a group of representatives cold-calling hundreds of prospects every day. Of those, maybe a few dozen could be persuaded to buy the product in question. Today, the idea is largely the same, but the methods are far more efficient. Many of today's telemarketers are not human. In some cases, as you've probably experienced, there's nothing but a recording on the other end of the line. It may prompt you to "press '1' for more information," but nothing you say has any impact on the call - and, usually, that's clear to you. But in other cases, you may get a sales call and have no idea that you're actually speaking to a computer. Everything you say gets an appropriate response - the voice may even laugh. How is that possible? Well, in some cases, there is a human being on the other side, and they're just pressing buttons on a keyboard to walk you through a pre-recorded but highly interactive marketing pitch. It's a more practical version of those funny soundboards that used to be all the rage for prank calls. Using soundboard-assisted calling - regardless of what it says about the state of human interaction - has the potential to make individual call center employees far more productive: in some cases, a single worker will run two or even three calls at the same time. In the not too distant future, computers will be able to man the phones by themselves. At the intersection of big data, artificial intelligence, and advanced