Plan to teach baby robot to talk

ok, this is one story that I was kind of sitting on for no other reason than it at first seemed to be alarmist and derivative. So many are looking at it as either just a waste of effort and other reactionaries are screaming the AI's are commin! When both sides are patently wrong, why bother? But then Shaun sends in a report on the project that the BBS News had picked up on. And what are we talking about? The project to teach a "baby" robot to speak. And your already saying "teach a robot to speak? Just program in the words!" nope, wrong answer. What you have created is a fancy recorder. The "baby" would understand nothing about what was being said or why it was being said. The experiment is to try to get an AI to learn and understand the fundamentals of language just as a child would as it was learnig to speak. As the BBC reports:

Their findings could lead to the development of humanoid robots which learn, think and talk.

Here is more from the BBC article

What's next you ask - well Shaun say iChild...lol I on the other hand are a bit more freaked out and the first thing I though of was Kubric's AI based on Aldiss' "Super Toys Last all Summer" Read the article, read the story....you judge. Oh and yes I am trying to get Brian to let me read this disturbing piece on BMU and for your money, I thought Kubric nailed it.