1. Omar Zaiane Kim Solez

2. Provisionally on Tuesday Dec. 4 th 6-10 pm With food drink and guest lecture in addition to student presentations. ? Music? Please let me know if this works for you and feel free to make fine tuning suggestions. The 3000 word paper will be due November 29 th.

3. The technologic Singularity is crucially dependent on AI developments, unfriendly AI may represent the greatest existential risk out there.

4. It does not naturally follow that all AI researchers are believers in the Singularity.

5. It is amazing how much of a "relationship" you can strike up with the Sony Aibo robotic dog despite the fact it represents 2005 technology, none have been produced since then. Imagine what their capabilities would be today if Sony had continued developing them over the past six years!

6. The only way I could get one in 2003 and 2004 was to fly to the US stay in a hotel just long enough for the product to be delivered and then fly back home, they were impossible to get in Canada after 2002 through regular Sony channels here as there was not a market among Canadian consumers.

7. A child playing with them quickly deconstructs them to a point where they look quite ugly and incomplete. The main market in the US was affluent young women.

8. Most government investment in robotics in North America is in military robots, whereas the investment in Asia is in robots to care for the elderly and do household tasks. Most consumer developments in this area will probably come from Asia.

9. The replicants in the movie were products of genetic engineering, biology based flesh and blood beings, not silicon and circuit boards.