Is that you, HAL? No, it's NEIL: Google, US Navy pour money into 'associative' AI brain • The Register

"...The Never Ending Image Learner is a new approach to weak artificial intelligence systems that piggybacks on the immense tech fielded by companies like Google, and represents the bleeding edge of computer science research...."

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AI research at Google

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Google AI robot leaked/hoaxed via Reddit

On December 5, 2011, someone posted anonymously to reddit claiming to be a disgruntled former employee of the Google X Lab. See the discussion thread: I recently left Google X. The original post by J32PMXR was deleted after two hours, but here's a saved copy of what they wrote:

"This is in total violation of the NDA, but I don't care anymore. Sue me.

The central focus of Google X for the past few years has been a highly advanced artificial intelligence robot that leverages the underlying technology of many popular Google programs. As of October [2011] (the last time I was around the project), the artificial intelligence had passed theTuring Test 93% of the time via an hour long IM style conversation. IM was chosen to isolate the AI from the speech synthesizer and physical packaging of the robot.

The robot itself isn't particularly advanced because the focus was not on mechanics, but rather the software. It is basically a robotish looking thing on wheels. Speech recognition is somewhat better than what you would get with normal speech input, mostly because of the use of high quality microphones and lip-reading assistance.

I have had the chance to interact with the robot personally and it is honestly the most amazing thing that I have ever seen. I like to think of it like Stephen Hawking because it is extremely smart and you can interact with it naturally, but it is incapable of physically doing much. There is a planned phase two for development of an advanced robotics platform."

Follow up comments by J32PMXR say the robot has a suite of sensors including optical, laser, infrared, ultrasonic, and depth cameras. It can supposedly lip read, although that might be restricted to detecting emotion such as a smile. Most of the processing is done onboard, internet is used for external information. A stated goal is to enable intelligent conversation with your mobile phone, similar to Apple's Siri but more advanced.

Replies to the posting express skepticsm, but they also admit that Google is likely working in a similar direction. Another former Google employee replies that the idea of using a robot is non-Googly. They say Google would approach AI via statistical methods and by throwing massive computing power at the problem. Larry Page has hinted at this approach himself, see the quotes above.

Concensus on the reddit discussion is that this was probably a hoax. It's possible/probable that Google does indeed have some kind of AI-enabled robot in its lab. But the chances seem very low that a group of staff were fired and that one of them posted about it in public.