Google's X lab is home to many wonders, but perhaps none so science-fiction-sounding as its artificial intelligence, which has a predilection for cats. Here's why Google's building a brain.

It's the Nerd Super Bowl--Ken Jennings (winner of 74 consecutive Jeopardy! episodes) versus Brad Rutter (winner of several tournaments of Jeopardy! champions) versus IBM's natural-language processing prodigy, Watson. The last time an IBM supercomputer challenged a human opponent, chess champion Garry Kasparov resigned in tears.

Advancing the important cause of robotic party tricks, Swiss researchers also solved a visual processing problem.

Yes, says one of Russia's biggest web tycoons (who is also a Facebook stakeholder).

Music fans, be prepared to be wowed, and have notions of musicality tested by tech: A North Carolina company will be performing robotic recreations of old masterpieces, with an artificial intelligent recreation of their musical soul.

Talk of androids, advanced computer-based brain simulations and war robots is very exiting, but the development of artificial intelligence has been slightly stumped by a lack of transistors that work like our brains do. Until now.

Last week we introduced you to AIDA (the Affective Intelligent Driving Agent)--get used to her if you can. MIT and Audi are hoping that this robot, or one that looks even more like Pixar's EVE, may be gracing your car's dashboard to help you drive in the near future.

They play Connect Four. They mix martinis. They paint. And at this sixth annual event, robots go head-to-head in categories from navigation to remote-controlled flame throwing. In the past two years, the gathering has doubled to 70 events and entrants from more than 80 countries. Spectators will witness AI technology powering amateurs' homespun creations. Our favorite contest: the SOBotz (translation: 16-ounce robots) Combat. May the best bot win -- and survive. --Kate Rockwood

They play Connect Four. They mix martinis. They paint. And at this sixth annual event, robots go head-to-head in categories from navigation to remote-controlled flame throwing. In the past two years, the gathering has doubled to 70 events and entrants from more than 80 countries. Spectators will witness AI technology powering amateurs' homespun creations. Our favorite contest: the SOBotz (translation: 16-ounce robots) Combat. May the best bot win -- and survive. -- KR