Murder by numbers

In London on July 10th, 2008, four people were murdered in separate incidents.
BBC correspondent Andy Tighe said "To have four fatal stabbings in one day could be a statistical freak."
Professor Spiegelhalter declares this number was predictable.

http://www.physorg.com/news156540743.html

Prof. Spiegelhalter and his team of statisticians "counted how many murders occurred on each day over a three-year period. Four murders on the same day in London would be expected to occur about once every three years, and it has done. Seven days without a murder should occur about six times a year, and it does."

The trouble here is that the overall patterns are predictable, whereas specific events are not.

I'd like to introduce you to Eliza, a computer program by Joseph Weizenbaum, designed to imitate a non-directional psychotherapist. Cutting edge stuff back in 1966, but it's now easily dominated by AIM bots.
Eliza's importance was the approach it used in developing AI, which undoubtedly inspired Robin Burgener, in 1988 to invent something you may already be familiar with, 20q.

Based on the less addicting parlor game, 20q is an AI website that can guess what you are thinking of in approximately 20 questions or less.
The thing is uncannily good in the same way Amazon.com has become eerily good at recommending Cure cds I already own after I tell it how much I enjoyed the movie Dark City.

Now this is something of a morbid thought, but could one possibly develop this AI to assist in carving away the specifics from the patterns of murder?

FauxBot

Picture it, a future where one robot has been programmed to love.
You are an intern working with this robot and spend several hours each day testing his systems and loading new software routines, until one fateful day the robot refuses to let you leave.
The robot's bulky mechanical body blocks your exit and proceeds to hug you repeatedly while making pre-recorded dog and cat noises through a 20 watt speaker in its chest.

The above scenario seems ridiculous and amusing to everyone but Dr. Takahashi's intern who allegedly had this happen to her:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/90017-Japanese-Robot-Has-a-Fatal-Attraction

http://gear.ign.com/articles/959/959790p1.html

http://michiganmessenger.com/tag/akimu-robotic-research-institute


From the 5 seconds I've spent researching, I understand the above story to be a hoax.
If this is the case, there are a couple of things to be learned here:

The first is that it only takes approx. 5 seconds to research the validity of any random statement made on the Internet.

Second, is the fact we live in a time where an event like the one above isn't entirely unreasonable.
There are people commenting on how horrible it must have been for the intern, people making the usual SkyNet references, robot defenders making a case for Kenji (the robot), and so on.

There was a time when the public would only expect to find an article like this printed in the Weekly World News alongside a headline describing the affair P'lod had with the first lady of France back when she was a model.

The kneejerk violence people respond with towards Kenji (or robots in general) is a bit unsettling but not entirely unfamiliar. At least the torches and pitchforks have been replaced with blogs and comments ... mostly.

For your amusement.
http://pbfcomics.com/?cid=PBF115-Hug_Bot.jpg