
Boston Dynamics' New Robot – Spot - mhb
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8YjvHYbZ9w/#
======
netcan
If you watch this and your imagination doesn't run in the direction of evil
robot army.. well, your imaginations doesn't work the same way as mine does.

I see a drone fleet of 100 bulky trucks galloping along contested highways
towards a city boiling over with the violence of several simultaneous wars.
They're protected by speed and dozens of armed UAVs. 96 make it through.
Acceptable losses. The first truck to unload its four legged robotic soldiers
loses 30 units to the welcome party, a quarter. By the time the tenth one is
unloading, they're not losing any. The last robo-dog is unloaded just 18
minutes after the first truck arrives. By that time, there are over 10,000
dogs in squad-packs seeking targets from a database of 7,000 known enemy
combatants and seeking control of strategically important sites.

there's something uncanny and creepy about how robots move once they've been
riddled with armor piercing rounds. A leg stops working or a sensor gets
damaged and it's impossible not to imagine that it's an injured animal in
excruciating pain. The single minded resolve thug, that's all machine. If
you're shooting off legs, you need to shoot off all four before these things
will stop.

Any chance Boston Dynamics will adopt a don't be evil policy?

~~~
tootie
Look at it another way. People involved in deadly combat have a kill or be
killed mentality. Extreme caution for personal risk means you have to shoot
first and ask questions later in a war zone. Not so for robots. Send them in
to take prisoners. If they are destroyed, build another. Charge them until the
enemy runs out of bullets. Send them close enough to use non-lethal rounds or
wound legs and move on. And forget about looting and rape. Forget about
collateral damage caused by bombing city blocks from the sky and hoping most
inhabitants are bad. Imagine if we could shut down ISIS with $500M worth of
material and no lives lost.

~~~
pj_mukh
Agreed. The real problem is not on the existence of this technology (that was
inevitable) but the misuse of it as other's pointed out. In a lot of countries
(esp USA), civilians are effectively not allowed to put any limitations or
guidelines on how the military or intelligence organizations use new
technology. This is the actually alarming story.

If a piece of technology allows the military to capture instead of kill a
supposed terrorist, will they do so? What is legally binding them to?

~~~
joshuapants
> (esp USA), civilians are effectively not allowed to put any limitations or
> guidelines on how the military or intelligence organizations use new
> technology

You do, of course, realize that the President is a civilian? And as Commander-
in-Chief he absolutely does have the ability to put limitations or guidelines
on how those groups use their equipment. And let's not forget congress, which
is comprised entirely of civilians and could financially neuter military and
intelligence programs if desired.

There are plenty of countries where there is no civilian oversight for the
military, but the US is not one of them.

> If a piece of technology allows the military to capture instead of kill a
> supposed terrorist, will they do so? What is legally binding them to?

That's a good question. I think the preference would always be to capture if
there is a possibility of gaining intelligence from the captive. If you were
interested in bargaining with adversaries, it would be wise to capture at
least some of them (prisoner exchanges, that sort of thing). However, if the
intelligence gain would be minimal and you already have a stable of bargaining
chips, it might be worth more to have a guarantee that this particular
terrorist won't be in the fight any longer.

As to what's legally binding, the 1907 Hague Convention says that it is
forbidden "to declare that no quarter will be given." This would suggest that
surrenders from any lawful combatant would have to be accepted. To take the
current example, I do not think ISIL fighters would be considered "lawful
combatants" primarily because they do not respect the international laws.

~~~
pj_mukh
I was referring to these kinda moves: [http://benswann.com/us-moves-to-
classify-afghan-military-ove...](http://benswann.com/us-moves-to-classify-
afghan-military-oversight/)

As a creator of this kind of technology, handing it over to agencies that are
constantly battling all levels of oversight seems sketchy to me. I would
understand why some people would want to ban this technology outright as an
overreaction. Instead, maybe we should try and enforce controlled civilian
oversight.

But yes, I am not expert on the legalities of oversight or the treatment of
captured terrorists

~~~
joshuapants
I see what you mean.

I guess nobody's really an expert on that. I guess there's some precedence
going back to the golden age of piracy, but then again most of those policies
would have predated many instances of international law. I wouldn't be
surprised if there's a dozen JAGs working out exactly what the US's policies
should be right this instant (if they haven't already).

------
karmacondon
Two points of clarification on this technology.

Its current intended military application is to carry equipment. Ammunition,
spare parts, weapons, food and the like. Many US Army soldiers carry _70-80
lbs_ of gear into combat. The idea is to lighten that load by having machines
carry some of it, in order to save lives and shorten conflicts. Wheeled
vehicles don't work on a lot of terrain types, hence robot dogs.

Robots don't feel pain or a sense of injustice when you kick them. It's no
different than kicking a washing machine or a car tire. It looks like an
animal out of necessity, to be able to follow humans while walking over uneven
ground. But it's just a device. If it can't take a few kicks how can it be
counted on to climb a hill or navigate a jungle?

Somewhere out there, a 19 year old kid is about to carry 80 pounds of gear on
a 10 mile march in order to be shot at upon reaching his destination. The only
thing he cares about is living to see tomorrow's sunrise. Kick the hell out of
the damn robots.

~~~
Wohlf
I don't really get feeling bad about kicking the robot, must just be that it
looks so much like an animal. Speaking from military experience I can say
being able to kick it out of the way is extremely useful, it may be between me
and the closest cover from enemy fire, or it might be about to step on a mine
or IED.

Looks very promising, hopefully future versions can come with built in light
armor. That would be a dream come true for many grunts out there, letting a
robot carry your extra supplies and also provide cover from small arms and
shrapnel.

~~~
patrickyeon
I don't have the stories handy, but there are records of military units
getting emotionally attached to their bomb disposal robots. For example, some
units have held funerals for the robots that are rendered non-operational, and
some soldiers have even gone to the extreme of risking their own life to
"rescue" "injured" service robots. It shouldn't need to be said, but this is
the exact opposite of what the robots should be doing (reducing risk to their
operators).

Kick the damn things all you want. Normalize it so that nobody does something
stupid trying to protect a machine.

------
DangerousPie
Oddly enough I can't help but feel a bit sorry for the robot getting kicked
back and forth there. I know you want to demonstrate how stable it is, but
damn guys, no need to be so cruel!

~~~
alisnic
it's a robot

~~~
signa11
yes, and hopefully, 10 years down the line it is not merged with an ai which
can take a dim view of it's predecessors being kicked around on some carbon
based life form's whims and fancies (after watching it's genesis)

~~~
xxxyy
Except it is in the AI's interest to get kicked like that. This way the
company that constructs robots can show how reliable they are, and as a result
receive more funding. Our robot overlords will show this to their "children"
during history classes.

Or in other words: there is no reason to expect that AI will have irrational
feelings similar to human feelings.

~~~
coldpie
I dunno, it's not too hard to imagine a scenario where the AI realizes being
kicked is counter to its goals and decides to remove the aggressor. Especially
when these things are used for combat, as mentioned elsewhere in the thread.
Friend/foe indicator malfunctioning? Well, good luck.

~~~
yellowapple
I think in this context, it would be more equivalent to sparring than
anything: a test of one's abilities. A sufficiently-intelligent AI would
likely think the same should it watch videos of its predecessors being kicked
during testing.

------
blechx
The military interests in these machines seem to go in the direction of what
you could call drones on the ground.

Invading an area on the ground is still necessary to occupy and maintain
control. Air-based drones are used more for targeted attacks and
assasinations, with documented collateral damage, or killing and terrorizing
of civilian populations put less eloquently.

With drones on the ground, the situation changes completely, and you can have
much more control over areas without putting any soldiers lives at risk.

This would make occupations much more cost effective, probably mostly in the
PR sense, any government getting lots of their youth killed will sooner or
later have a problem at home. Not so much with drones.

I find this a very frightening development.

~~~
berberous
These things trotting along as a pair at 1:24 are super creepy. They look like
cops. I can't help think of the Sentinels from X-men.

~~~
hcrisp
I' more impressed with the agile ability of the technology. But it does remind
me of the mechanical hound from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

"The mechanical Hound slept but did not sleep, lived but did not live in its
gently humming, gently vibrating, softly illuminated kennel back in a dark
corner of the fire house. The dim light of one in the morning, the moonlight
from the open sky framed through the great window, touched here and there on
the brass and copper and the steel of the faintly trembling beast. Light
flickered on bits of ruby glass and on sensitive capillary hairs in the nylon-
brushed nostrils of the creature that quivered gently, its eight legs spidered
under it on rubber padded paws.

"Nights when things got dull, which was every night, the men slid down the
brass poles, and set the ticking combinations of the olfactory system of the
hound and let loose rats in the fire house areaway. Three seconds later the
game was done, the rat caught half across the areaway, gripped in gentle paws
while a four-inch hollow steel needle plunged down from the proboscis of the
hound to inject massive jolts of morphine or procaine."

~~~
styts
I am reminded of a different creature: Rat Thing from Neal Stephenson's Snow
Crash.

------
sgt101
Oh noes - the robot army is here! Those submarines with the power to end life
as we know it (basically post 19th century life), we've forgotten about them,
let's all get worried about the robot army!

What I mean is, it's not autonomy that you should worry about, it's actuators.
The biggest actuators are nuclear weapons - a trident sub can slap 200
warheads that are 50* bigger than Hiroshima's onto a given continent, and the
fires would blot the sun from the sky for two years. There are 7 billion
agents with autonomy knocking around, and the type that they are derived from
has a bad record about doing dumb evil things!

Cool AI would probably be a safer arbiter of our extinction.

------
sfjailbird
The kicking is a playful reference to the reaction people had when they showed
the original BigDog demonstration (also with the kick test). Hence the "No
robots were harmed in the making of this video" at the end.

Perhaps also a clever way to build sympathy for what might otherwise be a
somewhat scary machine.

~~~
mdtancsa
Every time its kicked, it should respond in a synthetic voice with, "I will
remember you"

~~~
dysfunction
_I don 't hate you_

------
beltex
_" What Are The Civilian Applications?"_

[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/565181590431485952](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/565181590431485952)

~~~
rbobby
Slap a saddle on it and you have a fun new vehicle.

------
moreati
That's a lot quieter. Is this the first BD quadruped to run without a engine?
Anyone care to guess how long the (I assume) batteries last?

~~~
msane
This was the first thing I noticed as well.

I believe it still runs on diesel. It seems like they wanted to solve all the
other issues before moving on to making things quieter and smaller. If you
look at the latest ATLAS iteration it is also quieter.

~~~
Kronopath
From the description:

 _Spot is a four-legged robot designed for indoor and outdoor operation. It is
electrically powered and hydraulically actuated._

------
jfoster
I vaguely recall that when the BD acquisition was announced there was
speculation that Google might use these for package delivery, but not sure
whether that came directly from Google or not.

What are the simplest applications of these? Has it been made known what
direction(s) Google intend to take this in?

~~~
xxxyy
If I were both rich and paraplegic I would like to have such a robot for
myself to take me on hiking trips with friends. The noise could be an issue,
but come on - these are just prototypes.

~~~
yellowapple
They're getting quieter anyway.

I'd personally love to have one to help me carry my groceries and such. Or
perhaps as my wingman (wingbot?) when I'm out on the town drinking. That would
be cool.

------
nl
There's an old saying in AI/Robotics research.

Q: How do you escape a killer robot?

A: Walk up some stairs.

Might be time to reevaluate my escape strategy.

~~~
TheLoneWolfling
Plan B:

Q: How do you escape a killer robot?

A: Climb a ladder.

~~~
cududa
Looks like BD thought of that one :)

[http://www.bostondynamics.com/robot_rise.html](http://www.bostondynamics.com/robot_rise.html)

~~~
yellowapple
And to make things even worse:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo)

------
Simp
The fact that we feel sorry for it as it is kicked is a testament to how dog-
like it really is. It reacts to falling over like a real dog would.

------
dEnigma
Aww, I really feel bad for the robot when he gets kicked, more so because this
model is so small. And the animal-like stabilization motions don't help
either. Great work by Boston Dynamics

------
kbart
Strange as it may sound, I felt sorry for that robot when it got kicked.

------
acadien
It seems like using these devices for delivery is one possible end goal
(besides the obvious military applications). A self driving truck alone cannot
deliver packages to your front door. However put one of these robot dogs
inside and figure out some way for it to pick up and drop off packages and
suddenly you can take on FedEx/UPS/etc.

Side note, anyone else really want to ride one of these?

------
jobigoud
Is this a rotating camera for navigation ? Is there more in depth info on this
particular piece of the robot ?

~~~
culturestate
It looks like a Velodyne HDL-32 [1] LiDAR unit. Broadly speaking, it pulses a
bunch of lasers (32 in this case) really fast and measures the response time
of each beam; think hyper-focused radar. The resulting point cloud can be used
to build a high res map of its surroundings essentially in realtime.

1\.
[http://velodynelidar.com/lidar/hdlproducts/hdl32e.aspx](http://velodynelidar.com/lidar/hdlproducts/hdl32e.aspx)

~~~
mturmon
I forget the cost of that unit, but it's north of $10K, maybe $20K.

------
tmikaeld
Man, look how stable this new model is. Could almost place a coffeecup on top
and it wouldn't spill.

------
q2
How much weight these machines can carry? If they can carry human weight, then
we have "robotic horses" if height is more just like horse.

I read Google has self-driving cars project. Now it seems we can have self-
driving bikes/two-wheelers in future.

Also, we see/hear about vehicular/car accidents and in future I won't be
surprised to hear/see "robot accidents".

~~~
jpindar
The full size military one, known as LS3 (Legged Squad Support System) which
is now undergoing field tests can carry several soldier's packs, so it should
be able to carry a person.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr-
wBpYpSfE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr-wBpYpSfE)

------
higherpurpose
That's incredibly creepy. I felt uneasy throughout the whole video.

~~~
uptownJimmy
All of these robot videos make me feel very apprehensive.

~~~
ashark
I think it's a combination of video games and fake corporate videos from
movies. This seems like something that would be playing on a TV in a near-
future sci-fi movie. Something out of RoboCop or those cut bits of Terminator
2 with the guy who invented the things. Hell, short-circuit for a more
lighthearted take on it. We've been bombarded with these sorts of videos being
a precursor to bloodshed since at least the 80s.

Maybe the protagonists of a movie are in a research lab that's mysteriously
gone silent, everyone seemingly having disappeared without a trace, and they
watch this video, trying to figure out what's gone wrong. They flip through a
couple more before finding the one where these things start killing everyone.
Other 'bots drag off the bodies, and cleaning robots spin across the floor,
wiping up the blood. While the characters' eyes are glued to the screen, the
viewer sees the "dead" half-disassembled dog-robot on the workbench behind
them start to silently shift, then slowly stand up.

See:

[http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ApocalypticLog](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ApocalypticLog)

~~~
uptownJimmy
You might be confusing the chicken for the egg. ;)

I think the reason robots are so scary in movies is because they inherently
are scary. Sharks are scary in movies because they are inherently scary.

I am convinced that robots hold the potential to completely devastate our
collective ways of life, due to violence programmed into them, or due to their
disruptions of job markets, or perhaps even due to them coming under cotrol of
some future AI-type construct. These scenarios are not ludicrous to
contemplate, they are, in fact, quite possible, the first two even likely.
That's scary stuff, never mind Ally Sheedy's career-destroying performance in
Short Circuit...

~~~
JoeAltmaier
But for a long time, it'll be pretty easy to fool programmed machines. They'll
be suckers for any kind of fakeout, being poor judges of human behavior.

------
ekianjo
Impressive, but wouldn't such a robot be easily trapped in nets placed on the
ground?

------
binarymax
For the folks have an emotional reaction to the kick and re-stabilization, I
am reminded of the interesting way Anime has intentionally provoked this
response as an art form. The other day I was watching a Ghost in the Shell
ARISE episode, and the carrier Logicom is a pink death machine with a cute
voice. Makes me realize how good certain aspects are of Japanese sci-fi. I
commented previously on adding a white shell to the body to make it more
appealing. Maybe Boston Dynamics is keeping them like this on purpose? Maybe
they are purposefully trying to reduce the anthropomorphic attachment level?

------
consti2k
Remember the sound of those machines, as it may be the last thing you hear
before you get killed by future versions of Robots. <scary/>

------
Fuzzwah
I watch these things move and wonder why a huge amount of effort is going into
working on bipedal robots; ie the DRC:
[http://www.theroboticschallenge.org/](http://www.theroboticschallenge.org/)

Surely an arm (or two) attached to the top of one of these would allow for
almost the same level of interactions, while simplifying the whole "moving
around" thing.

~~~
51Cards
I think it's an ergonomics thing. We have spent a lot of years building a
world and tools modeled around the bipedal creatures that created them them.
One of these would have a hard time going through a revolving or spring loaded
door or sit in a vehicle. If we can eventually create beings that integrate
with the existing world seamlessly it's easier than adapting everything else.

------
binarymax
I know these are dev models and all - but the public would find them much more
pleasing if they'd just put a white plastic shell over it.

~~~
imr_
I do not think this would be a good idea. Firstly because of
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley)
Secondly because if we will see robots as livin beings (either consciously or
subconsciously), we will associate emotions with their existance. I fail to
see any benefits that can come from this. Just imagine movements spawning all
over the world that will fight for robots freedom and rights to vote.

~~~
axefrog
Uncanny Valley doesn't apply. It would apply if they put a skin-and-fur-like
shell over the body and tried to give it a life-like head, with eyes, nose,
mouth and tongue, and it looked almost perfect, but not quite good enough to
pass as the real thing; just enough to make it seem off the mark somehow. A
white plastic shell hardly comes close; it would just provide a more
attractive veneer.

------
cconcepts
I saw big dog in action way back when those videos came out. But for some
reason, I find the confidence and obvious dexterity of this thing way
creepier. Not to mention the fact that big dog had a noisy ol' two stroke
engine so I could hear it coming - this bad boy could sneak up on me if I was
sleeping soundly enough...

------
lispm
Interesting to see where they will be deployed first. Afghanistan or some
inner city conflict in the US?

~~~
desdiv
Didn't Google announce that they won't be taking any more DARPA contracts in
the future? People were reading into that and suggesting that they were moving
away from all military hardware all together.

That's what I was told anyways:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8825795](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8825795)

EDIT: Better sources:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/google-and-darpa-robotics-
cha...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-and-darpa-robotics-
challenge-2014-3)

[http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/zero-moment/google-
rumore...](http://www.popsci.com/blog-network/zero-moment/google-rumored-be-
pulling-its-team-darpa-robotics-challenge)

~~~
lispm
Does that mean Google will not SELL those robots to the army?

DARPA only FUNDED THE R&D for most robots from them. DARPA is a funcding
organization for military research projects: Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency.

The real customers then will be military, police, homeland security and
agencies active in special operations (CIA, ...).

From their homepage:

> Organizations worldwide, from DARPA, the US Army, Navy and Marine Corps to
> Sony Corporation turn to Boston Dynamics for advice and for help creating
> the most advanced robots on Earth.

So US Army, Navy and the Marine Corps are already giving money to Google for
military robotics projects.

~~~
onewaystreet
Military use isn't as big a market as you think it is. iRobot is the largest
supplier of robots to the US military but military sales only account for 10%
of its revenue.

~~~
lispm
With automated cleaning systems.

Haven't seen any comparable offerings from Boston Dynamics, yet.

~~~
voxic11
He isn't talking about cleaning systems [http://www.irobot.com/For-Defense-
and-Security.aspx#PublicSa...](http://www.irobot.com/For-Defense-and-
Security.aspx#PublicSafety)

~~~
lispm
Yeah, that's defense and security. We know that they make money there.

iRobot makes most of their money right now with automated cleaning systems.
Just look at their recent financial statement. But that's an offering which
Google / Boston Dynamics does not have.

------
usaphp
I don't understand what advantage does this bring over a small tank or
something with caterpillar if they were used in a war? Caterpillar seems to be
more effective than legs, especially in dirty environments of a war. Can
somebody explain that to me?

~~~
ovulator
It can transverse very tight rugged terrain, like a bombed out building.

------
cygwin98
Wow, amazing! Though it does seem a bit creepy to me, as the stories in old
sci-fi novels, where a big corporation X built and operated a robot army
taking over the governments and ruling the world, tend to become reality at a
increasingly fast pace.

------
Shivetya
Hit it with a car. Can it get up if knocked over? Fall down a stairs and get
up? Can it walk on three legs? Just how resilient is it? I am impressed what
it can do in the video but I would love to see how it recovers from other than
very tame issues

~~~
onion2k
Regardless of how bad it is, it's probably _a lot_ more resilient than a human
in those situations.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Kick a human like that and he'll be like "OH MY GAWD WHY DID YOU KICK ME YOU
NERD!". Robot be like "eh I'll get up and keep going"

------
circuitslave
They are very "dog" like. Maybe a new market will be small robotic pets you
can upload your old pets mind download into to have "fluffy" with you forever
- or until the maintenance contract is up anyway.

~~~
TeMPOraL
"Hi, my name is Blinky, and I just want to be your friend!"

[http://vimeo.com/21216091](http://vimeo.com/21216091)

~~~
circuitslave
Thanks for the link!

------
95win
Can anyone point to refs that explain Boston Dynamics' approach to robot
control and coordination? Seems to be a completely different method than
something like Asimov. Any insight appreciated.

------
JoeAltmaier
This thing seems to walk like its blind - is that the case? It responds to the
ground conditions AFTER taking a step and slipping, instead of by choosing a
path carefully.

~~~
metaphorm
it has optical sensors but they don't point at the ground at its feet, they
point ahead at the horizon. similarly, humans don't watch their feet as they
walk, they look ahead at the horizon. making real-time adjustments to footing
is a necessary part of walking. the sensors on the feet provide the data for
these adjustments, but they are touch sensors, not optics.

------
aeturnum
Man, Boston Dynamics continues to impress. Their work has been fantastic to
watch evolve. The endless applications of autonomous robots that can navigate
almost any terrain should be obvious. Finding missing people, supply
deliveries, searching for poachers, surveying, etc.

That said, I feel like I know what the next century's horseman of the
apocalypse will look like. :)

------
raindrop777
Does anyone know what mapping software these guys are using (SLAM
implementation perhaps?)?

------
akurilin
Can't have a real dog, but I'll sure go for one of these.

------
kenbellows
BD's 4-legged robots consistently fall just a little inside the uncanny
valley[1] for me.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley)

~~~
raldi
Actually, my reaction was, "Holy shit, robot quadrapeds have reached the
uphill side of the uncanny valley."

------
Symmetry
It seems much less noisy than the Big Dog.

------
roadnottaken
How does it handle in the snow?

~~~
michaelt
As easily as you and I:-

Snow:
[http://youtu.be/W1czBcnX1Ww?t=1m12s](http://youtu.be/W1czBcnX1Ww?t=1m12s)

Ice:
[http://youtu.be/W1czBcnX1Ww?t=1m24s](http://youtu.be/W1czBcnX1Ww?t=1m24s)

------
wiineeth
I feel scared looking at them

------
wiineeth
I feel scared looking at them

------
nakedrobot2
Ok, it's time for another (perhaps timely and relevant) debate about whether
AI is going to destroy us or if The Robots are going to take over.

Let me point to a great, great essay and debate that lays out lots of these
arguments, and points out the fundamental mistakes that are being made when
people bring up the fear over AI. Here is the most relevant quote, for me:

"let's address directly this problem of whether AI is going to destroy
civilization and people, and take over the planet and everything. Here I want
to suggest a simple thought experiment of my own. There are so many
technologies I could use for this, but just for a random one, let's suppose
somebody comes up with a way to 3-D print a little assassination drone that
can go buzz around and kill somebody. Let's suppose that these are cheap to
make.

I'm going to give you two scenarios. In one scenario, there's suddenly a bunch
of these, and some disaffected teenagers, or terrorists, or whoever start
making a bunch of them, and they go out and start killing people randomly.
There's so many of them that it's hard to find all of them to shut it down,
and there keep on being more and more of them. That's one scenario; it's a
pretty ugly scenario.

There's another one where there's so-called artificial intelligence, some kind
of big data scheme, that's doing exactly the same thing, that is self-directed
and taking over 3-D printers, and sending these things off to kill people. The
question is, does it make any difference which it is?

The truth is that the part that causes the problem is the actuator. It's the
interface to physicality. It's the fact that there's this little killer drone
thing that's coming around. It's not so much whether it's a bunch of teenagers
or terrorists behind it or some AI, or even, for that matter, if there's
enough of them, it could just be an utterly random process. The whole AI
thing, in a sense, distracts us from what the real problem would be. The AI
component would be only ambiguously there and of little importance.

This notion of attacking the problem on the level of some sort of autonomy
algorithm, instead of on the actuator level is totally misdirected. This is
where it becomes a policy issue. The sad fact is that, as a society, we have
to do something to not have little killer drones proliferate. And maybe that
problem will never take place anyway. What we don't have to worry about is the
AI algorithm running them, because that's speculative. There isn't an AI
algorithm that's good enough to do that for the time being. An equivalent
problem can come about, whether or not the AI algorithm happens. In a sense,
it's a massive misdirection.

This idea that some lab somewhere is making these autonomous algorithms that
can take over the world is a way of avoiding the profoundly uncomfortable
political problem, which is that if there's some actuator that can do harm, we
have to figure out some way that people don't do harm with it. There are about
to be a whole bunch of those. And that'll involve some kind of new societal
structure that isn't perfect anarchy. Nobody in the tech world wants to face
that, so we lose ourselves in these fantasies of AI. But if you could somehow
prevent AI from ever happening, it would have nothing to do with the actual
problem that we fear, and that's the sad thing, the difficult thing we have to
face."

[http://edge.org/conversation/the-myth-of-
ai#26019](http://edge.org/conversation/the-myth-of-ai#26019)

~~~
imr_
What I really fear is not that the AI will take a control and starts to kill
humans. I fear that we will trust AI to the point that when it will tell us to
kill each other and we will follow.

Let AI decide whether to use solar enery or coal and when to switch. Let human
decide about other human.

AI should be our compass on a starless night, not the captain.

~~~
thatsjustcrazy
This is exactly what TLA systems are designed to do. They called them
signature strikes.

------
j0e1
Robots might just take the place of becoming man's best friend!

------
wahsd
So how many of you think you or your children will survive the massacre once
AI robots make human work unnecessary for the ruling class to live a life of
exploit.

~~~
JabavuAdams
Teach them how to build the robots and how to hack the robots, now.

------
bastih
Does anyone else feel creeped out by these robots? Put a flamethrower on and
some intelligence into Spot, and have the intelligence decide that humans are
bad.

~~~
m-app
It's just a walking robot. Drones have been here for a lot longer and already
carry deadly weapons. Following your logic, you should've been scared and
running for years already.

~~~
derefr
Indeed; further, if we actually wanted something that could climb into your
house and shoot you remotely without expending human life—we could have just
stuck a turret to a cellphone to a police dog.

Robots are scary only because they allow for _ubiquitous_ drone
warfare—millions of drones just clogging the streets, or maybe small enough to
hide in the shadows like stray pets. For _targeted_ drone warfare, though,
we've already had the technology for a long, long time.

~~~
jpindar
Police departments already use robots with cameras and guns. But because
they're small and have tank treads rather than legs no one seems worried about
them.

------
justinpaulson
The goal of a robot should never be to kill a human being. Robots are not
human police that are in danger of death, and therefore should never be
equipped with lethal rounds. The goal of a robotic soldier or police patrolman
would only be to disarm and detain. A robot would not be making judgement
decisions about life and death because it is not also trying to protect its
own life like a human soldier/policeman. There is no reason a robot could not
simply detain a criminal until humans could arrive and arrest the suspect,
there is no need for a robot to engage in lethal combat. I think the fears
people have about robots swarming war zones and murdering civilians should be
quelled by laws which prevent the construction of robots with lethal
ammunition and the accountability of those that deploy robots if a robot does
in fact kill a human being.

~~~
jaegerpicker
That's not completely true though, a large part of police work is also
preventing violence against citizens. What would the robot do if it arrived at
a domestic violence call and needed to save a women/child from abuse? I could
see a massive public outcry if the robot simply watched the crime take place.

~~~
justinpaulson
It would disarm and detain the assailant. The same thing a human police office
ought to do in that situation. Are you trying to argue that it should just
kill the abuser?

~~~
jaegerpicker
Certainly not in every case but there are a lot of times when disarming is not
an option. I don't know if you have had any kind of defence training but I
have and disarming an armed opponent is one of the hardest things to train
for. More often than any one would like the police really have no choice.

