Robotics and Artificial Intelligence: The Future of Intelligent Machines

At its new Stone Mountain, Georgia, facility, Roomba-like robots shuffle between stacks, another adds shipping labels while another arranges packages in pallets

One of the reasons Amazon is spending billions on robots? They don’t need bathroom breaks. Arriving a few minutes early to the public tour of Amazon’s hi-tech Stone Mountain, Georgia, warehouse, my request to visit the restroom was met with a resounding no from the security guard in the main lobby.

Between the main doors and the entrance security gate, I paced and paced after being told I would have to wait for the tour guide to collect me and other guests for a tour of the 640,000-sq-ft, four-story warehouse.

The message of Zootropolis 2 | In praise of Martin Kettle | Miles Kington’s dog | Defining the north

I beg to differ with Peter Bradshaw’s view that “no mainstream film is attacking Donald Trump’s administration head-on” (The Golden Globes ceremony ignored politics. But their big winner taps today’s unhappy turbulence, 12 December). We took our two granddaughters to see Zootropolis 2, in which a diverse pair of detectives (a fox and a rabbit) took on a narcissistic leader, demonstrating the importance and joy of all things DEI. Well done, Disney!
Peter Kettle
Gravesend, Kent

• I was saddened to read that Martin Kettle’s column this week will be his last (The world of today looks bad, but take hope: we’ve been here before and got through it – and we will again, 15 January). We shall miss his brilliant prose, shrewd political analysis and fierce intellect. With his departure, journalism will have lost a giant.
Malcolm Bower
Gunnislake, Cornwall

Anthropomorphising tech helps Silicon Valley shares to soar, but our empathy should be directed to worthier causes

Most readers of Kazuo Ishiguro’s 2021 novel Klara and the Sun will have been moved by the portrait of its eponymous AI narrator. As a solar-powered “artificial friend”, bought as a companion and potential substitute for a sick teenage girl, Klara fulfils her duties with a loving loyalty that makes it impossible to think of her as a mere piece of tech.

Brilliant, thought-provoking fiction. But back in the real world, anthropomorphising AI may not be such a clever idea. During the summer, Anthropic, a leading tech company, announced that in the interests of chatbot welfare, it was allowing its Claude Opus 4 model to avoid supposedly “distressing” conversations with users. More broadly, amid explosive growth in AI capacities, there is emerging speculation over whether future Klaras may even deserve to be accorded legal rights like human beings.

Machines can be funny when they mistakenly bump into things – but standup is a tough gig even for humans

Robots can make humans laugh – mostly when they fall over – but a new research project is looking at whether robots using AI could ever be genuinely funny.

If you ask ChatGPT for a funny joke, it will serve you up something that belongs in a Christmas cracker: “Why don’t skeletons fight each other? Because they don’t have the guts.”

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Cars with human safety drivers set to appear in 2026 but black-cab drivers dismiss service as ‘fairground ride’

People in London could be hiring driverless taxis from Waymo next year, after the US autonomous vehicle company announced plans to launch its services there.

The UK capital will become the first European city to have an autonomous taxi service of the kind now familiar in San Francisco and four other US cities using Waymo’s technology.

Nell Steele recalls escorting a robot across a pedestrian crossing and watching another singing Baby Shark

Starship Technologies’ robot delivery vehicles (‘Delivery robots will happen’: Skype co-founder on his fast-growing venture Starship, 4 October) were introduced to Sale, Greater Manchester, by Co-op stores about two years ago. Though their use has dwindled (their size limits them to smallish deliveries), a few still cluster outside each Co-op.

They have a charm of their own, and I feel quite maternal about them. I worry about their safety and have escorted a robot across a pedestrian crossing so that the cars would stop for it.

San Bruno officers pull over Waymo but say a ticket wasn’t issued, as ‘citation books don’t have a box for “robot”’

If a driver makes an illegal U-turn, but no one is behind the wheel, does the car still get a ticket? A police department in California grappled with this existential question last week.

During a DUI enforcement operation, officers in San Bruno pulled over a car without anyone behind the wheel after the autonomous vehicle made an illegal U-turn at a light. A post by the San Bruno police department on Saturday shows an officer looking into a Waymo – the leading autonomous ride-hailing vehicle in the San Francisco Bay Area – after stopping the signature white car.