Humans are social creatures, and throughout history knowledge has been both disseminated and absorbed in a social manner, through not only written artifacts but also by oral tradition. Self-learning social cloud robots have the potential to not only be humanity's natural social window into digital knowledge, but they also afford an opportunity to collect and catalog new human knowledge in a novel way. Imagine how much uncataloged human knowledge could be saved through a natural human-centered interface which one would have feelings for like a pet: everything you teach your robot would be known by every other robot in the cloud.

Alexander Reben studied human-robot symbiosis at MIT and is an engineer and artist exploring how technology can augment humanity through technology.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)