I’m always a little amazed by the fact that there are people who actually fail the human end of Turing Tests; in spite of the remarkable progress being made in this area, the best AI’s and chatbots these days are still dumber than a box of rocks when it comes to human interaction. Combine this with the creepy realistic-but-expressionless faces of many recently-developed sophisticated robots (something we’ve talked about before), and the whole “Uncanny Valley” thing rears its ugly, disembodied head again and again. This is probably nowhere more evident than with Nadia, the latest social robot developed by scientists at Nanyang Technological University  in Singapore, winner of today’s Creepy Robot of the Day Award. She gives the “parole bot” in Elysium  (see below) a run for his money in the manners department:

Elysium Parole Robot

“STOP TALKING! Elevation in heart rate detected. Would you like a pill?”