John Markoff of the New York Times reports on signs that the rate of advance in artificial intelligence research is accelerating with many useful technologies entering the market.

At Stanford University, for instance, computer scientists are developing a robot that can use a hammer and a screwdriver to assemble an Ikea bookcase (a project beyond the reach of many humans) as well as tidy up after a party, load a dishwasher or take out the trash.

One pioneer in the field is building an electronic butler that could hold a conversation with its master — á la HAL in the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey” — or order more pet food.

Though most of the truly futuristic projects are probably years from the commercial market, scientists say that after a lull, artificial intelligence has rapidly grown far more sophisticated. Today some scientists are beginning to use the term cognitive computing, to distinguish their research from an earlier generation of artificial intelligence work. What sets the new researchers apart is a wealth of new biological data on how the human brain functions.

Computers continue to get faster and higher capacity. At the same time, neuroscience is generating useful insights into how brains work. Both these trends look set to continue to enable the implementation of more complex computer algorithms that do more of what human brains can do and many things that human brains can not do well.

The article cites many examples of impressive advances such as the winning of the DARPA prize for a robot car that can guide itself over a long test track.

Last October, a robot car designed by a team of Stanford engineers covered 132 miles of desert road without human intervention to capture a $2 million prize offered by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, part of the Pentagon. The feat was particularly striking because 18 months earlier, during the first such competition, the best vehicle got no farther than seven miles, becoming stuck after driving off a mountain road.

Now the Pentagon agency has upped the ante: Next year the robots will be back on the road, this time in a simulated traffic setting. It is being called the “urban challenge.”

Once artificial intelligences become smarter than humans I do not see how they can be kept friendly toward us. I hope we do not reach a short-lived period of technological utopia followed by our extinction.