Ah, lovable robots, so helpful and kind and compliant, who wouldn’t fall in love with them? And that was the gist of a popular story by Robert Ito in our current print edition. People, perhaps channeling the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation’s promise of a robot as "your plastic pal who's fun to be with," are growing inordinately fond of their mechanical friends: What happens as robots become ever more responsive, more humanlike? Some researchers worry that people—especially groups like autistic kids or elderly shut-ins who already are less apt to interact with others—may come to prefer ... Read More