Search Search Careers in tech: Artificial intelligence Pepper, the 3ft 11in shiny box of circuits who can tell jokes and respond to human emotions / Reuters Artificial Intelligence is all around us and now is the time to get involved Click to follow The Independent Online How would you feel if a robot looked after your child?
 Worried?
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 What if that robot was as intelligent as yourself, if not more so, and was able to react to every problem and whim without ever tiring or wanting to scream?
 For those studying and working in artificial intelligence, creating this kind of situation could so easily become a reality.
 “AI is embedded in many educational applications,” explains Janet Read, a professor in child computer interaction at the University of Central Lancashire, pointing to new gesture recognition and interpretation technologies.
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 It is all around us today, pervading our everyday lives and allowing us to take advantage of image and voice recognition software, intelligent web searching and medical advances, the latter made possible thanks to robot scientists formulating hypotheses and interpreting data.
 In pictures: Artificial intelligence through history In pictures: Artificial intelligence through history Boston Dynamics describes itself as 'building dynamic robots and software for human simulation'.
 It has created robots for DARPA, the US' military research company Google has been using similar technology to build self-driving cars, and has been pushing for legislation to allow them on the roads The DARPA Urban Challenge, set up by the US Department of Defense, challenges driverless cars to navigate a 60 mile course in an urban environment that simulates guerilla warfare Deep Blue, a computer created by IBM, won a match against world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.
 The computer could evaluate 200 million positions per second, and Kasparov accused it of cheating after the match was finished Another computer created by IBM, Watson, beat two champions of US TV series Jeopardy at their own game in 2011 Apple's virtual assistant for iPhone, Siri, uses artificial intelligence technology to anticipate users' needs and give cheeky reactions Xbox's Kinect uses artificial intelligence to predict where players are likely to go, an track their movement more accurately Modern video games use AI to generate intelligent behaviour in non-player characters.
 NASA's Mars Rover was designed to make its own decisions, stopping and analysing only the rocks it felt would be useful.