evidence: ROBOTS — IN THEORY, at least — have been around for a long time. There are all sorts of ancient legends about artificially created helpmates and companions: Pygmalion’s statue-come-to-life girlfriend, clay golems, soldiers crafted of gold, talking mannequins. Aristotle theorized that automatons could one day rid the world of slavery by performing unpleasant menial tasks; Leonardo da Vinci drew up designs for a mechanized knight that could sit up and move its head. The word "robot" comes from the Czech word robota, or "compulsory labor." Its roots run through an Old High German word, arabeit, that means "trouble." Just saying. [...] But even if you’re not prone to nightmares about robots going rogue, there are reasons to fret about them. For one thing, they’re displacing humans: working in factories, serving as waiters in restaurants, greeting guests at hotels, even chanting mantras at a Buddhist monastery in China. Later this year, the University of London will host the Second International Congress on Love and Sex With Robots. (Yes. It’s a real thing. Or will be.) Artificial intelligence researchers are agog over the new concept of "neural networks" — computer programming based on how we think the human mind works, with layers and layers of algorithms that branch out and connect and reconnect, to allow robots to observe the surrounding world and learn from it the way a child does, without downloading databases. It may be the key they’ve long been searching for.