"Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed an algorithm that enables a robot to quickly learn an individual's preference for a certain task and adapt accordingly to help complete the task."
It would be interesting to see what kind of issues they will run into. (Granted this is a very restricted environment)
Indeed; it's definitely on topic and interesting work, and I expect that simple people-reading models like this will do tremendous amounts of good and make significant progress in parallel to the first-principles work that SI appears to be doing.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/robot-manufacturing-0612.html
"Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed an algorithm that enables a robot to quickly learn an individual's preference for a certain task and adapt accordingly to help complete the task."