Developmental psychologists are increasingly convinced that infants’ and children’s facility for imitation is what allows them to absorb so much, so quickly. So efficient is imitation as a method of learning, in fact, that roboticists are studying babies in order to understand how they pull off the trick of observing an adult and then doing as the grown-up does. Imagine if a robot could watch a human perform an action—say, place a silicon chip on a circuit board, or make a repair on a space capsule—and then replicate that movement itself. Elon Musk, founder of Tesla and SpaceX, has invested in
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