The newest promo video for Prometheus is pretty phenomenal — Michael Fassbender, in chokingly creepy fashion, introduces his David android, who we of course know will turn out to be evil and awful. But hey, this is the real future.
Creepy David makes repeated mention of his commitment to understanding us — and there’s nothing sci-fi about that. We can already see increased emphasis put on building software with empathy. Software that can help us even when we’re inarticulate or dumb. Software that can think things through for us. Just look at Siri — if it’s worth anything at all, it’s because it can process natural language. Or look at what the US Navy is doing to prepare robots that can work alongside humans.
So, it’s on it’s way — just hope the other 99.9 per cent of the stuff in Prometheus doesn’t happen. [io9]