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As someone who worked in robotics at CMU in the mid 80s with Whittaker, & Raibert, and Crowley this was definitely super exciting to watch. You've come a long w

As someone who worked in robotics at CMU in the mid 80s with Whittaker, & Raibert, and Crowley this was definitely super exciting to watch. You've come a long way baby. I remember watching you great, great grandfather hopping around in Raibert's lab in 1984. Yeah, and sort of scary.

isjamesalive 6y ago
Really scary. Whenever I see the latest Boston Dynamics video, I’m always thinking ‘and now imagine it’s hunting you’.
- SkidanovAlex 6y ago
  Watch Black Mirror episode called Metalhead.
  - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    One of the best episodes! It’s like a totally different series to that last season with vr-gay/not-gay falcon man and Miley Cyrus signing a bad NiN cover. But yea. The mean robot dogs, just good short form story telling with so little dialog.
- cogman10 6y ago
  That was my first thoughts watching this video "Shit, these things are going to be on the battle field any day now". I mean, I guess better a robot than a person.. but still.. pretty terrifying to think we are soon to have people hunting robots.
  - pvaldes 6y ago
    > pretty terrifying to think we are soon to have people hunting robots for the robots, maybe Animal traffic is a lucrative and it seems as illegal as unstoppable. My bet is that if this robots will deploy in a signifiant number, the people soon will realize that can make a life if they trap, club and dismantle expensive robots for selling metal parts and any valuable cargo that they would carry. Will be also illegal but some will try anyways. Anything electric can be insta-fried with a higher voltage or, more slowly, with a cheap molotov cocktail. Not much different than hunting a bear or deer, maybe more profitable.
- krisoft 6y ago
  Meh. If someone wants to "hunt" you with a robot they can already do so with a UAV (think MQ-1 Predator, not an off-the-shelf quadrocopter). It is an already existing true and tested technology. Large governments around the world already maintain literal armies to maintain them and efficiently employ them to kill people. The fact that that weapon is not aimed at you or me is merely a political decision. With legged robots a lot more development is needed before they can do the same. I guess what I want to say: These robots are not deadly yet. The kind of people who can turn them deadly can already kill you if they want. I don't see why you should worry marginally more.
  - bengale 6y ago
    If someone with the resources to hunt me with a robot wants me dead I’m sure they could also afford some terrifying merc to do it too.
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    Bombs cause infinitely bigger international uproars for good reasons. Robot assassins that cannot die change the calculus. Governments don't have to risk losing their human assets in order to take out a target. They can just send out a 4-legged drone to prick them with polonium and call it a day.
    - systemvoltage 6y ago
      Or nuclear bomb, you know.
      - briantakita 6y ago
        Too messy. Bad press. State actors would also break some sort of treaty without plausible deniability.
    - chris_wot 6y ago
      Which means that governments start making robots that can defend people.
  - 6y ago
kazinator 6y ago
Alternative version: I remember watching your great grandmother's legs cavorting around in Herbie Hancock's "Rock It" video ... in 1984. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHhD4PD75zY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHhD4PD75zY
- SubGenius 6y ago
  Ah, thanks for sharing the song. Haven't heard it in a while. I was listening to Chick Corea's 80s material earlier today though. That era had a lot of cheesy sounding jazz fusion that I can't get enough of!
  - kazinator 6y ago
    I'm mostly a rock and roll and metal head, but I listened to a lot of Chick Corea in the 80's, like the Where Have I Known You Before album from his Return to Forever band. These days, I use a Canadian streaming service called Stingray Music. There, I just discovered a channel called "For the fans of Weather Report". It streams all that sort of stuff nonstop. Mahavishnu, Hancock, ...
    - SubGenius 6y ago
      Nice. Weather Report is great (Jaco!), and Zawinul's other band too, Syndicate. I'm happy John Mclaughlin is still playing. Here's a song from a couple weeks ago you might like! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ1Jx1hf0I8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ1Jx1hf0I8
pdfernhout 6y ago
I agree those robots are both exciting and scary. After I graduated from Princeton (doing cognitive science related to AI and robotics), I hung around the CMU Robotics labs in 1985-1986 -- mostly as a visitor to Hans Moravec's and Red Whittaker's labs. But I also dropped by other labs, including to learn from Ben Brown, who was an awesome mechanical engineer in Raibert's Leg Lab. Raibert's team had done amazing stuff with the first hopping robot and was then getting going with a first bipedal one. James Crowley had recently left, so sadly I never got to meet him. I think I would have liked him and vice versa, having probably similar interests in personally-assistive household companion robots -- like Silent Running drones. When I was between two housing rentals that did not quite overlap, I slept one night on the floor of his mostly-emptied Household Robots lab next to a running PERQ computer to keep warm (from the cold air conditioning). The crazy things you do when you are twenty... :-) It was kind of sad for me (for a couple of reasons) to see Raibert's dynamic robots immobile in the MIT museum when I visited there with my kid a few years ago. But I can be glad those robots got a good home there and the recognition they deserved -- rather than, say, be discarded for scrap like the 1942 Atanasoff-Berry computer at Iowa State (since thankfully reconstructed). CMU's Robotics Institute was heavily supported by defense dollars back then -- even as at least some (or maybe even all?) robotics researchers there then thought giving robots guns was a dumb idea. There were also researchers -- especially in Hans' lab -- who thought robots would and even should surpass humanity as "Mind Children". But I wondered if even that positive aspiration would really work out as well as some hoped. Since then, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the future of robotics and humanity, and how to get more benefits than harms from robotics. It probably would not take much more than a dumb-ish self-replicating anti-personnel robotic cockroaches to wipe out humanity. (Or even smaller self-replicating things like infectious bioweapons...) And even the smartest AIs like in James P. Hogan's "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" novel might wipe out humanity first in their infancy and then perhaps only later regret it. And if robots and AIs are designed mainly by competitive people to give themselves (or their funders) competitive advantages over other people -- whether for military or business reasons -- bad outcomes seem more likely than if other motives guide their creation. Even as there is no certainty even given the best intentions, as I saw from a simulation I made a couple years later on a Symbolics in ZetaLisp of self-replicating robotics -- who unintendedly turned cannibalistic during the first simulation run (eating their own children). I had only programmed them to simply assemble themselves to an ideal form from nearby parts and then divide. But after they divided, the most convenient source of spare parts was their offspring. I ultimately had to add a sense of "smell" and scent marking of self/child to avoid that. That unexpected total surprise of the (simulated) robots initial behavior -- obvious now in hindsight -- has stuck in my mind every since. Although, even as I called the fix "smell", perhaps one might think of it as "love"? :-) Related: "Straight Up -- by Paula Abdul" https://genius.com/Paula-abdul-straight-up-lyrics https://genius.com/Paula-abdul-straight-up-lyrics "I've been a fool before / Wouldn't like to get my love caught in the slammin' door / How about some information, please? / ... Do, do you love me? ..." In any case, it seems plausible that our direction heading out of any Singularity may have a lot to do with our social direction/maturity going into one. Acting positively and pro-actively may be the best hope we have -- and that means we need to emphasize social wisdom ASAP (whether a UBI or whatever other compassionate initiatives). The result of decades of thinking since then is summarized in my email sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity." Or in more detail, essentially we need to move away from a model of unilateral domineering security to one of mutual intrinsic security, as I explain here: "Recognizing irony is key to transcending militarism" https://pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html https://pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transce... "... There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ..."

isjamesalive 6y ago

Really scary. Whenever I see the latest Boston Dynamics video, I’m always thinking ‘and now imagine it’s hunting you’.

SkidanovAlex 6y ago
Watch Black Mirror episode called Metalhead.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  One of the best episodes! It’s like a totally different series to that last season with vr-gay/not-gay falcon man and Miley Cyrus signing a bad NiN cover. But yea. The mean robot dogs, just good short form story telling with so little dialog.
cogman10 6y ago
That was my first thoughts watching this video "Shit, these things are going to be on the battle field any day now". I mean, I guess better a robot than a person.. but still.. pretty terrifying to think we are soon to have people hunting robots.
- pvaldes 6y ago
  > pretty terrifying to think we are soon to have people hunting robots for the robots, maybe Animal traffic is a lucrative and it seems as illegal as unstoppable. My bet is that if this robots will deploy in a signifiant number, the people soon will realize that can make a life if they trap, club and dismantle expensive robots for selling metal parts and any valuable cargo that they would carry. Will be also illegal but some will try anyways. Anything electric can be insta-fried with a higher voltage or, more slowly, with a cheap molotov cocktail. Not much different than hunting a bear or deer, maybe more profitable.
krisoft 6y ago
Meh. If someone wants to "hunt" you with a robot they can already do so with a UAV (think MQ-1 Predator, not an off-the-shelf quadrocopter). It is an already existing true and tested technology. Large governments around the world already maintain literal armies to maintain them and efficiently employ them to kill people. The fact that that weapon is not aimed at you or me is merely a political decision. With legged robots a lot more development is needed before they can do the same. I guess what I want to say: These robots are not deadly yet. The kind of people who can turn them deadly can already kill you if they want. I don't see why you should worry marginally more.
- bengale 6y ago
  If someone with the resources to hunt me with a robot wants me dead I’m sure they could also afford some terrifying merc to do it too.
- heavyset_go 6y ago
  Bombs cause infinitely bigger international uproars for good reasons. Robot assassins that cannot die change the calculus. Governments don't have to risk losing their human assets in order to take out a target. They can just send out a 4-legged drone to prick them with polonium and call it a day.
  - systemvoltage 6y ago
    Or nuclear bomb, you know.
    - briantakita 6y ago
      Too messy. Bad press. State actors would also break some sort of treaty without plausible deniability.
  - chris_wot 6y ago
    Which means that governments start making robots that can defend people.
- 6y ago

kazinator 6y ago

Alternative version: I remember watching your great grandmother's legs cavorting around in Herbie Hancock's "Rock It" video ... in 1984. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHhD4PD75zY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHhD4PD75zY

SubGenius 6y ago
Ah, thanks for sharing the song. Haven't heard it in a while. I was listening to Chick Corea's 80s material earlier today though. That era had a lot of cheesy sounding jazz fusion that I can't get enough of!
- kazinator 6y ago
  I'm mostly a rock and roll and metal head, but I listened to a lot of Chick Corea in the 80's, like the Where Have I Known You Before album from his Return to Forever band. These days, I use a Canadian streaming service called Stingray Music. There, I just discovered a channel called "For the fans of Weather Report". It streams all that sort of stuff nonstop. Mahavishnu, Hancock, ...
  - SubGenius 6y ago
    Nice. Weather Report is great (Jaco!), and Zawinul's other band too, Syndicate. I'm happy John Mclaughlin is still playing. Here's a song from a couple weeks ago you might like! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ1Jx1hf0I8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZ1Jx1hf0I8

pdfernhout 6y ago

I agree those robots are both exciting and scary. After I graduated from Princeton (doing cognitive science related to AI and robotics), I hung around the CMU Robotics labs in 1985-1986 -- mostly as a visitor to Hans Moravec's and Red Whittaker's labs. But I also dropped by other labs, including to learn from Ben Brown, who was an awesome mechanical engineer in Raibert's Leg Lab. Raibert's team had done amazing stuff with the first hopping robot and was then getting going with a first bipedal one. James Crowley had recently left, so sadly I never got to meet him. I think I would have liked him and vice versa, having probably similar interests in personally-assistive household companion robots -- like Silent Running drones. When I was between two housing rentals that did not quite overlap, I slept one night on the floor of his mostly-emptied Household Robots lab next to a running PERQ computer to keep warm (from the cold air conditioning). The crazy things you do when you are twenty... :-) It was kind of sad for me (for a couple of reasons) to see Raibert's dynamic robots immobile in the MIT museum when I visited there with my kid a few years ago. But I can be glad those robots got a good home there and the recognition they deserved -- rather than, say, be discarded for scrap like the 1942 Atanasoff-Berry computer at Iowa State (since thankfully reconstructed). CMU's Robotics Institute was heavily supported by defense dollars back then -- even as at least some (or maybe even all?) robotics researchers there then thought giving robots guns was a dumb idea. There were also researchers -- especially in Hans' lab -- who thought robots would and even should surpass humanity as "Mind Children". But I wondered if even that positive aspiration would really work out as well as some hoped. Since then, I've spent a lot of time thinking about the future of robotics and humanity, and how to get more benefits than harms from robotics. It probably would not take much more than a dumb-ish self-replicating anti-personnel robotic cockroaches to wipe out humanity. (Or even smaller self-replicating things like infectious bioweapons...) And even the smartest AIs like in James P. Hogan's "The Two Faces of Tomorrow" novel might wipe out humanity first in their infancy and then perhaps only later regret it. And if robots and AIs are designed mainly by competitive people to give themselves (or their funders) competitive advantages over other people -- whether for military or business reasons -- bad outcomes seem more likely than if other motives guide their creation. Even as there is no certainty even given the best intentions, as I saw from a simulation I made a couple years later on a Symbolics in ZetaLisp of self-replicating robotics -- who unintendedly turned cannibalistic during the first simulation run (eating their own children). I had only programmed them to simply assemble themselves to an ideal form from nearby parts and then divide. But after they divided, the most convenient source of spare parts was their offspring. I ultimately had to add a sense of "smell" and scent marking of self/child to avoid that. That unexpected total surprise of the (simulated) robots initial behavior -- obvious now in hindsight -- has stuck in my mind every since. Although, even as I called the fix "smell", perhaps one might think of it as "love"? :-) Related: "Straight Up -- by Paula Abdul" https://genius.com/Paula-abdul-straight-up-lyrics https://genius.com/Paula-abdul-straight-up-lyrics "I've been a fool before / Wouldn't like to get my love caught in the slammin' door / How about some information, please? / ... Do, do you love me? ..." In any case, it seems plausible that our direction heading out of any Singularity may have a lot to do with our social direction/maturity going into one. Acting positively and pro-actively may be the best hope we have -- and that means we need to emphasize social wisdom ASAP (whether a UBI or whatever other compassionate initiatives). The result of decades of thinking since then is summarized in my email sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity." Or in more detail, essentially we need to move away from a model of unilateral domineering security to one of mutual intrinsic security, as I explain here: "Recognizing irony is key to transcending militarism" https://pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html https://pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transce... "... There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ..."