Do people prefer to be ruled by robots like "Terminator" or "Battlestar Galactica"? Probably not, but they would prefer robotic bosses. Or would they prefer to have robots thinking for themselves rather than taking commands? Having a "robot" brain is not that far off from the horizon.

Robotic assisted control is perhaps already here in the forms of electronic devices such as smartphones or the latest advanced computer. What if robots could evolve into your boss or even make decisions for you? There is some evidence to suggest that some people prefer automaton managers rather than humans. And there is indeed a "robotic" brain in the works.

New research that came out towards the end of last month from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) suggests that people want more robots in the manufacturing business. The workers believe that these robots would be more efficient. Some manufacturers have realized that they are benefits to automaton production.

"In our research we were seeking to find that sweet spot for ensuring that the human workforce is both satisfied and productive," Matthew Gombolay, a PhD student at CSAIL, said. "We discovered that the answer is to actually give machines more autonomy, if it helps people to work together more fluently with robot teammates," the MIT News reported.

The research itself was actually carried out by one robot. In the study, groups of two humans and one robot carried out tasks together. These tasks were completed in one of three conditions: firstly, manually, the tasks were completed by humans; secondly, it was fully autonomous, in other words all tasks were completed by a robot. And then semi-autonomous, where one human carried out tasks for themselves, and the robot was allocating tasks to another human, MIT News reported.

A fully-autonomous environment was what was proven to be preferred by human workers. The workers surmised that the robots "better understood them" and "improved the efficiency of the team," MIT News reported. These tasks were delegated, scheduled, and coordinated via a human-generated algorithm. The human element is needed to generate these tasks.

Not everyone agrees with the robot overlords. One analyst, Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights & Strategy, says the idea of having autonomous robots in charge would get old really fast. Moorhead further adds that workers would get bored by not having to make decisions for themselves especially for work purposes, ComputerWorld reported.

"I think reality would be different from the test," Moorhead said. "While, at first, we may want a robot to do everything for us, we would get naturally bored. What would we do? We'd be bored to death," ComputerWorld reported.

While workers debate over their robotic bosses, a robot brain is coming. This is new type of robotic brain can acquire new skills by browsing millions of web pages. This project is conducted by a group of U.S. researchers. It is collecting information from vast areas and even social media and video platforms such as YouTube, BBC reported. The "Robo Brain" project collects its information from the internet rather than programmed by humans.

The "Robo Brain" system can absorb data from public internet sites and computer simulations so that it could apply its knowledge in future interactions, CBS News reported. Besides studying 120,000 YouTube videos, the brain has also been studying up to 1 billion photographs and 100 million how-to documents and appliance manuals. Once that is complete, the brain would just translate and store the information so that it could access it later.

The "Robo Brain" project is not alone. In Europe, a similar project called "RoboEarth" is in development. "RoboEarth" has been described as a world wide web for robots, BBC reported. Its capabilities were demonstrated by researchers at the Eindhoven University in the Netherlands in January. Similar to Robo Brain, RoboEarth too wants to become an international archive for digital information that can be accessed by robots.

Robo Brain's information gathering will be taught by humans. Its learning process will be facilitated by crowd sourcing. At the moment, its website will showcase what the robot's brain has learned. And then website visitors could add and contribute more data, as well as correct the information if it is needed, CBS News reported.

Ashutosh Saxena, lead author on the project and assistant professor of computer science at Cornell University, said in a statement that "Our laptops and cell phones have access to all the information we want," adding, "If a robot encounters a situation it hasn't seen before it can query Robo Brain in the cloud," CBS News reported.

The Robo Brain project was presented at the 2014 Robotics: Science and Systems Conference in Berkeley in July.