Rodney Brooks, Rethink Robotics founder and former director of the MIT Computer and Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, said he hoped Baxter represented a "new concept in manufacturing".

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Even teenagers, with their boundless enthusiasm for looking ridiculous, have to draw the line somewhere, and the artificial fabrics and science-fiction design of glam rock's outfits, which make the costumes in the closing credits of "Mamma Mia!"

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The leadership of Rensselaer faculty in Web science, Big Data, artificial intelligence, and other research areas uniquely situates the university to help expand Watson's abilities.

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Artificial intelligence as a branch of computer science enjoyed a surge of interest and attention in the mid-1980s and there was a corresponding surge of medical applications.

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Many science books have fallen into this trap, particularly in the fields of artificial intelligence and consciousness.

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The development, documented in the peer-reviewed journal Science, may stir anew nagging questions of ethics, law and public safety about artificial life that biomedical experts have been debating for more than a decade.

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Today, Katz works at the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he is the principal research scientist at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

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The school is strong in Web science, big data and artificial intelligence, making it a good fit for the first deployment of Watson in an academic institution.

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"We're glad to hear that they're not putting an artificial deadline on completion of the regulations, and giving the scientists time to do the science, " said Deborah Goldberg, an attorney for Earthjustice.

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