Watch This Childlike Humanoid Robot Begin To Comprehend Language

Robot iCub uses an artificial neural network to understand new sentences. A robot with an artificial brain is learning languages--even heavily accented ones--by stringing together words and sentences. Peter Ford Dominey and his colleagues at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research taught an iCub toddler-bot to learn speech patterns, and it can think before it speaks. Our brains process spoken words in real time and anticipate what's next, which allows us to hold meaningful c...