Robots like C-3PO and BB-8 are plausible future helpers.

The way the Star Wars crew employs artificial intelligence is not so far from reality.

“In the not too distant future we will probably have droids that are as smart as C-3PO and BB-8” Grazier said.

Currently, Google’s AI is doing okay at a handful of languages — whereas C-3PO is fluent in over 6,000. But researchers are betting that Google’s AI is going to get much smarter in the coming years — in 2014, it was estimated to have an IQ around 26.5, but by 2016, Google AI had nearly doubled its smarts to an IQ of 47.3. That's still not as sharp as an average six-year-old, but it's an impressive leap.

Last week, scientists at NASA announced they’d successfully employed Google’s machine learning to track down two new planets.

Meanwhile, a robot named Sophia managed to become the first AI of its kind granted citizenship in Saudi Arabia earlier this year. Sophia still sounds very robotic, but it can converse without pre-programmed responses — a potential first step towards more robot helpers for humans.