First The Wall Street Journal announced , “High Tech Hedge Fund Hits Limits of Robot Stock Picking.” The newspaper explains that machine learning, the technique “at the heart of efforts to build self-driving cars,” hasn’t proved to be very effective at picking stocks.

Robots have been getting bad publicity of late. You remember robots — the machines that will be taking over your job.

It turns out the robots aren’t so great at driving either. Check out this Scientific American headline: “Deadly Tesla Crash Exposes Confusion over Automated Driving.”


Earlier this month, Financial Times columnist Richard Waters opined that “Robots Must Up Their Game to Solve Real Problems.” Waters argued that yes, a robot can beat you in chess, and may soon be able to beat you in the sci-fi game StarCraft, but that “a computer is not about to take your job.”

I am breathlessly awaiting the first user reports from the incipient world of robot sex, a favorite subject of the British tabloids, which have been monitoring the progress of ungainly latex-clad automatae (they are all female) in countries like Spain and Japan.

I imagine the first Yelp! review: “Mechanical . . . it felt like making love to a robot.” And that’s a compliment — five stars!

For the past few years I’ve been attending meetings of the Templeton Foundation-funded Cambridge Roundtable on Science and Religion, which more than once has tackled the difficult question of the existence of the soul. At the most recent meeting, MIT professor Rosalind Picard presented on the topic “Emotional Artificial Intelligence and the Soul.”

The takeaway for Picard’s presentation was that robots could be programmed to display some emotions, and one day might even generate some emotions, but that day remains far in the future. Picard seemed to be particularly underwhelmed by the recent appearance of the “social robot” Sophia on the Jimmy Fallon show.


Sophia’s creator, David Hanson, claimed that she “was basically alive,” which was promptly undermined by her awkward scripted exchanges with the late-night host. Sophia evinced the balletic grace of the Mechanical Turk, a jury-rigged 18th century hoax machine, and the charm of a Cambridge meter maid. (I’ve some parking “issues” of late.)

Yes, it seemed that robots could be programmed to display emotions, but for the moment they are indeed quite soulless.

To summarize: Robots can’t pick stocks, they can’t drive, they can’t write newspaper columns, they’re no good in bed, and they have no soul. I for one welcome the incipient reign of our new robot overlords, because it will obviously take place well after my lifetime.

Alex Beam’s column appears regularly in the Globe. Follow him on Twitter @imalexbeamyrnot.