On the day that would have been the late Stanley Kubrick‘s 81st birthday, the New York Times ran a fascinating cover story in the Sunday paper focusing on the ethics and evolution of robot intelligence — it’s no doubt the director of 2001: A Space Odyssey and producer of AI: Artificial Intelligence would have taken note (and been well ahead of the curve): “Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence,” writes John Markoff, “a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone”; the piece is also an intriguing companion to a Times story two weeks earlier about how “Japan’s legions of robots, the world’s largest fleet of mechanized workers, are being idled as the country suffers its deepest recession in more than a generation as consumers worldwide cut spending on cars and gadgets.”