Recommended Robot and AI Reads This Week

How the Modern Workplace Has Become More Like a Preschool
New research suggests that hard-to-computerize skills, such as social understanding, are key in those jobs that have resisted automation. The Upshot suggests that such skills should be emphasized more in higher education.

Laundroid, the Laundry-Folding Robot of Our Dreams, Is Only Slightly Ominous in Real Life
Ironically, the prototype machine described in this story, which takes five minutes to fold a shirt, mostly illustrates the scale of the problem with sophisticated household robots.

Researchers Say They’ve Re-created Part of a Rat Brain Digitally
The latest progress in a fascinating, and somewhat controversial, effort to re-create biological brains using computers.

Staying Human in the Robot Age
An interesting piece from Harvard Busines Review on the corporate forces driving the seemingly unstoppable automation of our lives.

Firm Plans to Replace Humans with Machines in Its Lettuce Factories
Automation is already used in agriculture, but one Japanese company hopes to extend this to factory-farmed lettuce. It sounds impossibly expensive to me, but it’s interesting.