Robots. We make them in our own image, not from clay but from cogs, servos and circuitry. But a lot really does depend on our definition of the word "image." Does it mean that they pass for us on the street, or remain unrecognized for what they are over telephone lines or chat programs? Does it mean they look like us? Think like us? Or, does it mean, perhaps, all of the above?

My house is full of robots. Not just the trashcan-lid vacuum cleaner that seems to get a charge from being underfoot—but stuff doing stuff all over my house. Machines perform repetitive tasks that I just don't feel like doing: washing and drying my clothes, doing my dishes, mixing and kneading dough, and yes, vacuuming. Jasmine the vacuum cleaner likes to bump against my foot like an attention-starved puppy, only to back away and spin before heading off under the couch. But she'll be back.

Now if we treat a walk through my home as a jaunt through the Uncanny Valley, we find nothing upsetting. Robotics engineers and researchers proposed the concept of The Uncanny Valley both to explain and predict human reactions to certain shapes, in relation to the human form—reactions ranging from acceptance to revulsion, fondness to fear, love to terror. The Uncanny Valley correlation can extend from beloved, stuffed-animal cats called Mimi to giant CGI lizardiform whatzits rampaging through Gotham. Strictly speaking, anything can be placed along the continuum, from chairs to mountain ranges, but the interesting stuff happens in a fairly restricted area where objects are quite close to human form: the Uncanny Valley.

Human-like things that are benign and far enough away from us, such as Mimi or elves or the Easter Bunny, are unthreatening and cherishable. Those things uncomfortably close to us, but off just a bit, like zombies or Terminators or members of the Bush family, invoke terror and revulsion. If you think of the reaction as a dynamic relationship, acceptance of human-like objects rises until you reach an area just prior to "recognizably human" where acceptance plummets and indicates the kind of repulsion surrounding certain prominent residents of Kennebunkport.

Robots are not just about looks. How they communicate with us, how they think, how they ask and answer questions will play a large role in how we relate to them. In a 1950 paper, Alan Turing proposed a test for a computational machine's ability to demonstrate intelligence through conversation. In a Turing Test, a human judge is assigned to talk to two unseen partners: a human and a machine. If the judge is unable to reliably discern the human from the CPU, the machine has passed the Turing Test. Now generally I don't speak to my washing machine or my vacuum cleaner, but were one of them were to stop me in the hallway, it would have to pass the Turing Test to hold my attention.

To date, the champion Turing Test graduates seem to be those that mimic the schizophrenic. I may be missing something, but until now passing the Turing Test seems to rely on the reluctance of the human judge to say, "What the hell is wrong with you?" and cut the connection.

A machine that can carry on a serious and in-depth discussion is beyond our current technology, unless there are some serious black-ops CPUs hidden in hardened bunkers somewhere, in which case they are reading this and I should watch myself. In 1944, Cleve Cartmill got a knock on the door from FBI agents concerned about a description of nuclear chain reactions in his short story "Deadline." I may get a visit from waxy-faced model 9000s with fedoras tugged low on their foreheads. Meat or metal, Big Brother will be watching.

In recent years consciousness has been postulated to be an emergent property. Housed not principally by neurons but as a result of quantum effects skittering over their surfaces, consciousness perches outside the physio-chemical functions of axons and synaptic gaps comprising the physical structure of your brain, dependent yet separate. The complexification derived from quantum effects may be more difficult to duplicate on circuit boards—more profound than simply matching dendritic connectivity. If this is the explanation for consciousness, the desired results might be mimicked with intricate-enough algorithms and the anticipated development of quantum computers.

So the question is: which is creepier—a wax museum dummy or an intelligent intercom system? Visceral and intellectual answers may differ. At first glance, I would much rather have a conversation about politics or religion with my PDA's resident AI than listen to a bipedal cleaning robot lurch down the hallway in the middle of the night. On the other hand, when my PDA takes to referring to itself as Skynet my complacency and confidence in technological solutions may just suffer a major blow.

Robots will exist at the confluence of mind and image, optimality being where they don't scare the Hell out of us, or make us feel inferior or threatened. Inevitably they will make us feel these things, of course. Perhaps some fool will decide that we need benevolent machine overlords and release them. Or, perhaps, something wonderful will happen.

The evolution of artificial intelligence—coupled with the development of mechanical prowess and esthetic detailing—may take us to utopian levels of machine perfection. But this is engineering as we know it; nanotechnology—whose promise is as yet still to be plumbed—is a speeding train conducted by a 900-pound gorilla. Ultimately, much of nanotechnology is the interplay of molecules in complex and controlled ways; a choreography of directed physics and chemistry. Robotics will not be restricted to wired pathways or miniaturized servos; the direct interaction of molecular shapes, locks, transit systems and polarities can be harnessed and micromanaged for holistic results.

Once nanotechnology becomes complex enough, perhaps the sharp line delimiting engineering and biology will blur to such an indistinct borderland that the continuum between biology and artifact is no longer significant and the thing that slides, dripping, from the manufactory chamber looks outward with the birth innocence once reserved for our eyes only. And when we see those eyes freshly opened, as all parents know, then the learning really starts.

My mobile vacuum cleaner still comes running up against my foot in such a way that allows me to wonder if she want a scratch behind the micro switch. But Josie the dog isn't jealous, so at least to date the vacuum cleaner has not passed her Turing Test. So what can a little rub hurt? There now...good girl, Jasmine.