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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;-jeffB, post: 1376118, member: 27832&quot;]Yeah, they can. Not perfectly, but how many perfect <i>human</i> drivers do you know? <a href="http://wot.motortrend.com/nevada-preps-for-first-self-driving-cars-dmv-sets-rules-170899.html" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://wot.motortrend.com/nevada-preps-for-first-self-driving-cars-dmv-sets-rules-170899.html" rel="nofollow">Nevada is already defining laws for self-driving cars</a>; they&#039;ll be on the roads sooner than you think.</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://gizmodo.com/5796690/this-ball+catching-robot-will-someday-play-baseball-better-than-you" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://gizmodo.com/5796690/this-ball+catching-robot-will-someday-play-baseball-better-than-you" rel="nofollow">Well, actually, they can</a> -- in fact, they can catch two at a time, one in each hand.</p><p><br /></p><p><a href="http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation" target="_blank" class="externalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation" rel="nofollow">They can also</a> dribble a ping-pong ball between two fingers, tie a knot in a rope one-handed, or snatch a tumbling cell phone out of the air in the correct orientation.</p><p><br /></p><p>When it comes to dexterity, not to mention speed, <b>they&#039;re <i>already</i> better than us.</b></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m not sure how much weight I give most of these things, because it&#039;s hard to get people to agree on whether any given <i>human</i> is doing a good job of them. But computers have demonstrated the ability to detect art forgeries, and school systems continue to experiment with computer grading of essays.</p><p><br /></p><p>I don&#039;t mean to threadjack, but I&#039;ve spent a <i>lot</i> of time thinking about these questions. I&#039;ve been reading science fiction since I was tiny, and I struggled through at least five artificial-intelligence classes on my way to a Ph.D. in computer science. AI is not my field of specialty, and I was pretty thoroughly skeptical about it twenty years ago. Now, I&#039;m still not sure what I think of it -- but it is MOST DEFINITELY producing real-world results.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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