— If you believe Hollywood’s interpretation, the advent of intelligent robots rarely ends well for mankind. Movies like The Matrix, Terminator, and I, Robot all depict robots as quite intelligent, capable, and horrifyingly destructive machines that either aim to enslave us, or worse, bring about the extinction of the human race. In these cinematic examples, robots are rarely helpful or friendly (with the occasional exceptions like Wall-E or R2-D2). Intelligent robots with the capacity to take over the world are fine as long as they remain in the realm of science fiction. But are highly capable robots confined to the silver screen? When you read the news and see titles like “Evolving robots learn to lie to each other,” “Tiny robots are ready to spy on us,” “Are we being watched by flying robotic insects?,” “A real-life robotic avatar turns you into a machine,” or consider that IBM’s Watson can handily defeat humans on Jeopardy, you might think that it’s time to panic. Or you may wonder what exactly all those reckless scientists are thinking – haven’t they seen the movies? Why don’t they stop before it’s too late? Continue reading Is the Robot Apocalypse Just Around the Corner?

–You are most likely reading this article on a computer, and as you scroll down the page, you may decide to briefly switch over to Facebook or Twitter to type a quick status update. We usually do not stop to think that the ease with which we can do this is due to the seamless flow of charged electrons in our computers. Thus far, utilizing charged electrons to make computers has been endlessly fruitful, allowing us to build smaller and faster computer chips. Unfortunately, we cannot continue improving technology simply by scaling down to smaller sizes because we will eventually reach atomic sizes where our devices will no longer function. As we look ahead into the not-too-distant future, we will need to explore new, innovative technologies that go beyond utilizing electron charge – one such exciting new direction is the field of spintronics. Continue reading For more energy-efficient and higher-capacity computers, think spintronics!