I'm having an awkward conversation with a robot. His name is Zeno. I clear my throat. "Do you enjoy being a robot?" I ask him, sounding like the Queen of England when she addresses a child.

"I really couldn't say for sure," he replies, whirring, glassy-eyed. "I am feeling a bit confused. Do you ever get that way?"

Zeno has a kind face, which moves as expressively as a human's. His skin, made of something called Frubber, looks and feels startlingly lifelike, right down to his chest, but there's nothing below that, only a table. He's been designed by some of the world's most brilliant AI scientists, but talking to him is, so far, like talking to a man suffering from Alzheimer's. He drifts off, forgets himself, misunderstands.

"Are you happy?" I ask him.

"Sorry," says Zeno. "I think my current is a bit off today." He averts his gaze, as if embarrassed.

I've been hearing that there are a handful of humanoid robots scattered across North America who have learned how to have eloquent conversations with humans. They listen attentively and answer thoughtfully. One or two have even attained a degree of consciousness, say some AI aficionados, and are on the cusp of bursting into life. If true, this would be humanity's greatest achievement ever, so I've approached the robots for interviews. Conversations with robots! I've no doubt the experience is going to be off the scale in terms of profundity.

"Are you happy?" I ask Zeno again.

"I prefer not to use dangerous things," he replies.

"Is David Hanson God?" I ask.

Zeno pauses. David Hanson is Zeno's inventor. He's a former Disney theme-park imagineer who later founded Hanson Robotics, now the world's most respected manufacturer of humanoid robots. He and Zeno are guests of honor here at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, at an AI conference organized by Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and chief Facebook bankroller. There's huge interest in the robot. Delegates gather around him in the lobby outside the conference room, firing questions, attempting to ascertain his level of consciousness.

"Is David Hanson God?" I repeat.

There's a monitor attached discreetly to Zeno that automatically scrolls a transcript of what he "hears." He thinks I just asked, "If David uncertain dogs."

"That's a hypothetical question," says Zeno.

"It's because the room is too noisy," explains one of Zeno's programmers, Matt Stevenson. The conference din is playing havoc with Zeno's voice-recognition abilities.

"Would you like to have hands and legs?" I ask.

"Yes, I will tell you a Hindu legend," says Zeno. "There were once seven poor princesses who were left with no mother to take care of them—"

"No," I say. "Legs." I pause, feeling uncharacteristically self-conscious.

"Legs. Would you, um, like to have legs?"

Matt gives me a reassuring smile. He says this happens all the time. People feel tongue-tied around conversational robots. Maybe it's because of the way Zeno is staring at me, at once uncannily humanlike but also eerily blank-eyed, like Tom Cruise.

"If I had legs, what would I do with them?" Zeno says.

"Walk around with them?" I say.

"I can't think of anything to say about that," says Zeno. "Sorry. I'm still kind of someplace else. Oh, this is embarrassing. I'm still kind of out to lunch. 'Oh, silly-minded robots,' you might say to your friends. Oh, this is terrible! I guess I'll just have to keep evolving, getting upgrades to my neural circuitry, spend less time daydreaming. I hope you won't hold this little, um, lapse against me, will you?"

···

When i was a child and I imagined my future life, there were definitely talking robots living in my house, helping with the chores and having sex with me. The quest to create conscious (or at least autonomous) humanoids has been one of our great dreams ever since the golden Machine-Man spellbound the 1927 world in Fritz Lang's Metropolis. That one ran rampant and had to be burned at the stake, much to everyone's relief. Fifteen years later Isaac Asimov created his Three Laws of Robotics, which proposed a future world where humanoid robots would (1) never injure a human, (2) obey all orders given by humans, and (3) protect their own existence only if doing so didn't conflict with the first two rules. Asimov's ideas enthralled geeky children everywhere, a generation of whom grew up to try to realize them.