I guess some people see a difference between using them to hunt poor brown people in the middle east, and using them to hunt down poor brown people (or better yet, protestets enemies of the state) in USA.
Clearly these and the humanoid robot, were always just going to be used as machines of war, wether it be domestically or internationally.
Fair point but there’s a huge gap between “this company receives DOD funding” and “these robots are designed to hurt people”.
I’ve worked in robotics and I’ve worked for companies that have accepted government contracts. Funding can be challenging in the robotics industry so using gov contracts to develop generally applicable technology is tempting. I would never work on a system designed to hurt people, and I want to give the engineers at Boston Dynamics the benefit of the doubt that I would want.
Spot and Atlas both look like glorified tech demos to me. I have a hard time imagining them as any kind of effective weapons platform, even though they can look uncanny-valley scary. Especially when we already have effective robot weapons: drone with a bomb.
The gap may be huge morally but it’s very narrow in practice. The problem is that general purpose includes any purpose, including murder. It’s rather different from airborne drones because it can be much stealthier and can simply move into position in advance, wait in silence and strike without warning and like drones it is effectively disposable so there would be very little form of effective defense against such tactics deployed at scale, but qualitative differences like that aren’t really the main point we should be concerned about. The point is, we cannot ignore the extreme, profound danger these technologies pose to the protection and continued functioning of human civilization simply because it is not designed for it. It may be too late to stop it completely, but that’s absolutely no excuse for leaving it unchecked and allowing it to run rampant.
Nuclear weapons technology never stopped developing, but as humans, we all agreed it was too dangerous to let proliferate freely, and we have kept it in check and so far managed to avoid annihilating ourselves with it. It may not be the greatest success story, but it is the best we’ve been able to do, and there’s no reason not to keep trying, if the alternative is annihilation, and I believe in both cases it is.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. Yeah I’ve seen the Ghost Robotics prototype and I’m not a fan.
I agree with you about keeping a watchful eye on the potential dangers of developing technologies. My original point was simply to add nuance to the “robot = weapon” reaction. These things are tools. A knife can prepare food or inflict harm.
I think these days all of the new tech seems shitty or scary because of societal issues. Like how the absolute worst people in the world are in charge of these companies.
Yeah I agree with you here. A general use diaster response robot is just naturally going to have a lot of overlap with a general use war support robot. It becomes a complicated issue and what we would hope would be the stop gap of intelligent and responsible goverment oversight and regulation is of course malevolent and entirely captured by greed and nefarious interests.
Ideally all the robotics and AI people would rebel and we would install some utopic democracy built on human prosperity and freedom, but it’s a hard coordination problem to solve and the deck is stacked against us.
My worldview that the United States’ technology breakthroughs will be used to kill civilians across the globe? Yeah I don’t have to worry about being wrong, pretty much ever about that, lol.
This is an obvious overaimplification though. Many medical breakthroughs have been made in the US that have benefited people widely.
But I agree that AI and robotics is going to lead to more suffering and oppression on its current trajectory.
I was forced to sit through a military tech demo at a school I went to, and they showed off using Boston dynamics type dogs for “rescue”. But I think we all knew where that was going as soon as it had anything to do with military. The Boston Dynamics employees have to be delusional to think this wasn’t on the cards.
I think they got too used to mines and other industries using them for lidar inspections and forgot that they were literally working for a defence contractor.
Are they actually radiation-hardened though? My understanding was that robots for radioactive work tend to be extremely simplistic because of that limitation, and you probably don’t want a radioactive particle flipping a bit that makes the dog decide now would be a great time to do a backflip into the spent fuel pool.
Sorry but what the fuck did they think they were making these stupid ass things for
I guess some people see a difference between using them to hunt poor brown people in the middle east, and using them to hunt down poor brown people (or better yet,
protestetsenemies of the state) in USA.Clearly these and the humanoid robot, were always just going to be used as machines of war, wether it be domestically or internationally.
I’m sorry, where do you get the idea these are made for war? Is that what you think whenever you see a machine shop or a hardware aisle?
Where do you get the idea that these aren’t for war?
Why else would the Department of War (Formerly Defence) have dumped $123m into the company over the last 18 years?
Fair point but there’s a huge gap between “this company receives DOD funding” and “these robots are designed to hurt people”.
I’ve worked in robotics and I’ve worked for companies that have accepted government contracts. Funding can be challenging in the robotics industry so using gov contracts to develop generally applicable technology is tempting. I would never work on a system designed to hurt people, and I want to give the engineers at Boston Dynamics the benefit of the doubt that I would want.
Spot and Atlas both look like glorified tech demos to me. I have a hard time imagining them as any kind of effective weapons platform, even though they can look uncanny-valley scary. Especially when we already have effective robot weapons: drone with a bomb.
The gap may be huge morally but it’s very narrow in practice. The problem is that general purpose includes any purpose, including murder. It’s rather different from airborne drones because it can be much stealthier and can simply move into position in advance, wait in silence and strike without warning and like drones it is effectively disposable so there would be very little form of effective defense against such tactics deployed at scale, but qualitative differences like that aren’t really the main point we should be concerned about. The point is, we cannot ignore the extreme, profound danger these technologies pose to the protection and continued functioning of human civilization simply because it is not designed for it. It may be too late to stop it completely, but that’s absolutely no excuse for leaving it unchecked and allowing it to run rampant.
Nuclear weapons technology never stopped developing, but as humans, we all agreed it was too dangerous to let proliferate freely, and we have kept it in check and so far managed to avoid annihilating ourselves with it. It may not be the greatest success story, but it is the best we’ve been able to do, and there’s no reason not to keep trying, if the alternative is annihilation, and I believe in both cases it is.
Thanks for the thoughtful response. Yeah I’ve seen the Ghost Robotics prototype and I’m not a fan.
I agree with you about keeping a watchful eye on the potential dangers of developing technologies. My original point was simply to add nuance to the “robot = weapon” reaction. These things are tools. A knife can prepare food or inflict harm.
I think these days all of the new tech seems shitty or scary because of societal issues. Like how the absolute worst people in the world are in charge of these companies.
Yeah I agree with you here. A general use diaster response robot is just naturally going to have a lot of overlap with a general use war support robot. It becomes a complicated issue and what we would hope would be the stop gap of intelligent and responsible goverment oversight and regulation is of course malevolent and entirely captured by greed and nefarious interests.
Ideally all the robotics and AI people would rebel and we would install some utopic democracy built on human prosperity and freedom, but it’s a hard coordination problem to solve and the deck is stacked against us.
No there’s not, lmao
Thanks, we are all enlightened by your contribution. 👍
Any time! It’s easy!
God it must be peaceful to be this naive.
Must be nice to be so confident in your worldview
My worldview that the United States’ technology breakthroughs will be used to kill civilians across the globe? Yeah I don’t have to worry about being wrong, pretty much ever about that, lol.
This is an obvious overaimplification though. Many medical breakthroughs have been made in the US that have benefited people widely. But I agree that AI and robotics is going to lead to more suffering and oppression on its current trajectory.
I was forced to sit through a military tech demo at a school I went to, and they showed off using Boston dynamics type dogs for “rescue”. But I think we all knew where that was going as soon as it had anything to do with military. The Boston Dynamics employees have to be delusional to think this wasn’t on the cards.
Man, these T-1 Terminators are sweet! They have Vulcan gatling guns on them! Just think of all the flowers you can put in the barrels!
I think they got too used to mines and other industries using them for lidar inspections and forgot that they were literally working for a defence contractor.
“Defense” Contractor? The 20th Century called, they want their “Woke” terminology back. These guys contract with “The department of War” now.
Does that mean we can start calling them “death merchants” again?
defenceoffenceSearch-and-rescue operations in a hostile environment (e.g. Fukushima nuclear accident)
Are they actually radiation-hardened though? My understanding was that robots for radioactive work tend to be extremely simplistic because of that limitation, and you probably don’t want a radioactive particle flipping a bit that makes the dog decide now would be a great time to do a backflip into the spent fuel pool.
Did anyone actually believe that?
My exact thoughts
Exactly
Exactly.