Intelligent machines are on the way

Speculation about robots and other intelligent machines has long been the unchallenged preserve of the science-fiction writer and properly so, as long as the technology needed to realize these machines was a distant dream. With chunks of that technology now at hand, it is high time for engineers to speculate more knowledgeably about the real machines we are likely to see in the near future. We do have choices about that future; engineers have more than ordinary power to choose technology innovations, and those choices can help shape the ways we live.