Artificial intelligence research is crossing the Rubicon of getting computers to read and understand novels, essays, and other written-by-human-for-humans natural language text, writes Cade Metz in WIRED, with Facebook coming up with an app its says can answer reading comprehension Q’s about The Lord of the Rings. (If Skynet does become real, what will having fed it on a diet of rhyming dwarf names and ersatz Nordic bullshit do its twisted metal mind?) Will Knight at the Tech Review has more on one of the start-ups in this space, MetaMind.

Japan is leading the way on using robots for elder care, writes Mark Hay

There’s still a lot of debate as to how close we really are to self-driving cars, but something that could actually be more important — self-driving semis — are already on the road in Nevada, reports T. J. Raphael.

Evan Ackerman on NASA’s attempts to design a humanoid robot for MARS

Woz ❤ Bots (h/t Chris Matyszczyk)

MIT Media Lab is using machine learning to teach AI how to distinguish safe streets from sketchy ones

And Microsoft wants to use its giant robot brains to help you find your celebrity doppelganger