Singularity

Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner agrees with futurist Ray Kurzweil's assessment that the "singularity," when machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence, is nigh.

To provide some evidence that technology is moving in that direction, he showed a number of advancements in robotics, communication, and other areas in a keynote speech Thursday at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.

Here, Rattner snatches an apple from the grasp of a robot arm and hand that can sense objects purely by changes in the surrounding electric field.