"Last year, a video circulated around the Internet depicting a delighted German Shepard sniffing at a fine cut of beef on the floor while a Sony AIBO robotic dog watched curiously.

It was a cute scene, until the AIBO became a bit too interested in the steak. Without warning, the real dog viciously attacked the AIBO, while off-screen human witnesses shrieked in fear.

Who pitted the canine against the computer? Sony researchers themselves, in collaboration with Hungarian animal behavior experts. And that's just one of the myriad experiments conducted by Sony Computer Science Laboratory (CSL) Paris, a commercial laboratory where research and development don't always go hand in hand."

posted by David Pescovitz at 01:37:23 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments