Above: Flamebot420, the ultimate trash-talking robot.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Going largely unnoticed amidst the drama and philosophical interest of IBM's Jeopardy-playing robot, Watson, another brilliant robot faced off against a human expert today.

Dubbed "Flamebot420," the robot has been programmed to engage in the highest levels of profanity-ridden trash-talking, emasculating opponents and questioning their sexuality. It was developed in secret by Dr. David Breslin, a professor at the National Institute of Robotery, who hopes his experiment will usher in a new age of super-smart machines.

"For far too long, robotics has limited itself to teaching machines to play games," Breslin said in an interview before the event. "That's fine, I guess, but anybody with Google can answer Jeopardy questions. I wanted to try something a little more challenging and unpredictable, and nothing is more challenging or unpredictable than talking to strangers on Xbox Live."

Built over the course of five years, Flamebot420 has been programmed with every insult and racial slur known in over 500 languages, as well as an advanced algorithm to determine which phrase will have the most impact in any given situation.

"It wasn't actually that difficult," Breslin said. "Especially since we didn't have to bother teaching it proper grammar or how to be good at video games."

In addition to known insults, Flamebot420 is also capable of generating expressions of willful ignorance on the fly, which Breslin claims is the machine's greatest asset.

"I don't want to say 'Nobel' just yet, but..." Breslin said, shrugging in mock indifference. "Let's just say that Flamebot420's lack of political correctness, decorum, and self-respect is going to shock the world."

Flamebot420's opponent in today's exhibition was 15-year-old Bradley Parker, a student at Grover Cleveland Middle School, who spends hours a day playing popular video game Call of Duty: Black Ops online under the gamertag CrunkDryver69.

"I'm not worried about any gay-ass machine," Parker said, checking to make sure his mother was out of earshot. "I'm gonna fuck that fucker's fucking grandma in her asshole and then shit on his face."

The contestants took their places in their specially designed soundproof booths and started a round of "Free for All" on the "Nuketown" map (those terms meant nothing to us, but both Breslin and Parker assured us that the contest would be sufficiently "hardcore"). We would be unable to hear them during the play session; Breslin told us that this was for the sake of both scientific integrity and common decency.

"You really don't want to hear what those two are saying to each other right now," he said. "It'd take years off of your life."

It was hard to tell what was occurring inside the booths, especially since no matter how well or poorly Parker was doing in the game, he appeared sweaty and agitated, bellowing into his headset and maintaining a vice-like grip on his controller. In contrast, Flamebot420 sat passively in front of its television, the occasional blip of an LED the only sign that it was doing anything.

After 15 minutes with no sign of how the contest was going or who would prevail, Parker suddenly rose, threw his controller to the floor, and emerged from his booth, pumping his fists into the air and shouting "Fuck yeah!" over and over.

A faint smell of smoke emerged as Breslin rushed into Flamebot420's booth to check on the machine. After a moment he came out, cradling the robot in his arms like a baby.

"I know now why you cry," Flamebot420 said before initiating a cascading power surge that melted every circuit in its tiny metal body.

"I don't understand it," Breslin said. "He was doing fine, and then the activity in his Awareness Matrix went off the charts and the neutron flow in his Shame Center started going backwards. If I had to guess, I'd say that Brad somehow managed to overload Flamebot420's tolerance levels. I'll have to check the recordings to verify this, but I think what I'll find on there is sure to be a pretty sick, almost pornographic, burn."

When asked if he would attempt to rebuild Flamebot420, Breslin appeared reluctant.

"I think I learned a lot from today's exercise," he said. "But it's going to be a while before we're ready to try this again. Given the limits of current science, there's nothing I can put into this box that will be more repulsive or annoying than a 15-year-old on the Internet."