The Telegraph My details My newsletters Logout Upgrade to Premium My details My newsletters Logout The Telegraph 10 ways humans are still superior to robots ability to read emotions Credit: Reuters 11 March 2016 • 3:15pm In a giant leap forward for robotics and artificial intelligence, a computer program this week beat the world champion at a human strategy game.
 The AI called AlphaGo is the brainchild of Google-owned British company DeepMind, and it is was victorious in two games of Go against the world's best player.
 But let's not get ahead of ourselves - this doesn't necessarily mean robots are going to overthrow humans just yet.
 Here's 10 basic human tasks that robots still haven't mastered, some of which even children excel at.
 Take hope!
 Tell jokes Friends script To tell really good jokes, humans draw on everything from body language to emotions.
 Researchers have been working for decades to produce funny artificial intelligence, but the artificial jokes don't quite have the same effect as Michael McIntyre bounding across the Apollo's stage sending up the habits of Britons.
 After being fed scripts from the entire Friends catalogue, an artificial intelligence from software developer Andy Herd came out with some funny but nonsensical lines such as: Chandler: So, Phoebe likes my pants Monica: Chicken Bob!
 Chandler: (in a muffin) (Runs to the girls to cry) Can I get some presents?
 Cook well Robots can't really cook food that you'd want to eat.
 The Moley Robotics' robot chef puts on a pretty convincing show, but it has only really mastered crab bisque - and it costs £50,000 a piece.
 IBM's Chef Watson has a similarly obscure palate.
 When the artificial intelligence was called upon to write a cookery book its dishes included asparagus grilled with pig's feet croquettes and mustard foam, and an apple and pork kebab cooked with curry powder, mushrooms and strawberries.
 Erm, yum.
 Do laundry This video of a robot trying to fold a towel is painful watching.
 The simple task of folding a rectangular piece of cloth would take a human seconds.
 But it takes the University of California Berkley's Brett (Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks) a full minute and a half.
 After 15 years working on Brett, robotics researcher Pieter Abbeel has managed to reduce the towel-folding time from 20 minutes, but it is still slower than the average 8-year-old.
 He has also trained the bot to put dirty clothes in a washing machine, which it does meticulously if not slowly.
 Walk down stairs Honda has been working for years to teach robot 16-year-old robot Asimo to do what human babies can do within months of being born - walk down stairs.
 It has had a number of infamous falls over the last decade, ending in a fairly painful looking face plant or two.
 The robot, which once visited the Telegraph, has successfully ascended and descended a stair case, but for every successful attempt there's a fall - and it still looks pretty shaky on its feet.
 Jump For humans, jumping is something we are never taught - we just know how to do it.
 Asimo can hop and jump a few centimetres off the ground, but the two legged bot has nothing on MIT's "cheetah" robot.
 The first of its kind, the cheetah can run up to 10 mph and jump over obstacles.
 It will be some time before humanoid robots can run and jump in the same way as humans, or even animal-bots can.
 Assemble Ikea furniture Putting together an easy-to-assemble Ikea bed is tough for the best of us, but it's the "moon-landing equivalent for robots", according to MIT's Technology Review.
 Robots find it difficult to work in cluttered places and have trouble handling and assembling small parts.
 Researchers at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore set about trying to get a robot to put one of those crafty Ikea pegs into a hole on a chair leg.
 The result is fairly tedious watching.
 The team will keep developing the robot until it manages to build a chair.
 MIT robots built an Ikea coffee table in 2013, but that's the simplest build in the flat pack company's remit.
 Drive A Google self-driving car goes on a test drive near the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California A Google self-driving car goes on a test drive near the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California Credit: PA Artificial intelligence hasn't quite mastered the art of driving in all environments yet.
 Google may have been testing its driverless cars in cities across the US, but adverse weather conditions such as rain, snow and even poor light are still a challenge for the technology.
 Google's cars have been in development for six years, and the company is stepping up their road readiness.
 Ford, Apple, Tesla, Uber and the GATEway project in the UK are all developing their own versions of the driverless car, none of which can yet drive as well as a human - yet.
 Run a reception desk It's probably not a great idea to put this creepy humanoid on your reception desk.
 The robot is called Nadine and she can shake hands and hold a conversation.
 Nadine remembers people's faces when she sees them a second time and can recall the last chat she had with them.
 Her conversation also changes depending on her mood - the human-like robot can be happy or sad.
 But Nadine can't yet pick up a phone or send an email.
 Empathise Pepper the robot Pepper is designed with the ability to read emotions Credit: Reuters One uniquely human trait is empathy - the ability to sense someone else's emotions and fully understand them.
 Although scientists are working hard on creating machines that can read and respond to emotion, they are far from human-level yet.
 The best example of a robot that can feel "empathy" is Pepper - the Japanese humanoid robot.
 Pepper reads human emotions by memorising and storing data about human responses using its cloud-based artificial intelligence.
 It can respond to emotional signifiers such as laughing or frowning.
 But its system is still just a set of data points - it can’t feel emotions, nor can it pick up the subtle nuances of human feelings.
 Reproduce An example of a sex robot Will sex robots like this ever be able to reproduce?
 Credit: The New York Times/YouTube Following his range of RealDoll sex robots, Matt McMullen is working on a range of smart sex robots that can communicate and appear to be able to think for themselves.
The idea of sex robots designed for humans has sparked controversy and there have been calls to ban the toys.
 But one thing's for sure - if robots ever become common intercourse partners for humans, they still won't be able to procreate any time soon.
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