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Aside from being a great development; I am really scared that robotics is improving this much. It feels like we are creating our own potential enemy.

tim333 11y ago
Hopefully the real world version will end up a bit more benign than the movies.
- tracker1 11y ago
  Right now, the closest we seem to have to a learning machine is IBM Watson, and to be honest, it's really far behind human intellect in terms of adaptive thought. Though maybe in 10-20 years Watson may evolve into something much more capable... As to a robot army + an evolved computer intelligence... that could be scary. It's easy to imagine something like remove anyone that isn't a "pure" X... where X is a combination of racial and religious dogma. In practice, and with practical limitations on resources, it's hard to imagine such an army that isn't outmatched (at least in numbers) by armed people (lets not weaken the 2nd amendment too much).
methodover 11y ago
Ugh, I really dislike this sentiment. Even assuming the most extreme possibility -- that we create a powerful, sentient machine -- this is no different than what every species on this planet has been doing for a few billion years now. Creating life is what we earthlings do. And yeah, maybe that life form you create goes on to do horrible things. But maybe it goes on to do really good things. You don't know until you try.
- nodata 11y ago
  > this is no different Creating something with our knowledge and the ability to learn ever faster than us is very different.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Yes, but this robot is not that. It's not even a step in that direction.
    - rokhayakebe 11y ago
      Until you have achieve the desired mobility, then tweak it to walk upright instead of using 4 legs, and insert a Watson enabled chip into it.
- ZenoArrow 11y ago
  Personally, I'm not concerned with that. I'd be more concerned about powerful robots controlled by governments/corporations/anyonewhohasaninterestincontrollingyourbehaviour. Look at what's happening in Yemen. The population there lives under the fear of drone strikes by the US (that includes the civilian population). If governments are prepared to do that with drones, what reason is there to suspect they'll turn down using something that's ground-based to impose control?
  - icebraining 11y ago
    using something that's ground-based to impose control? I think we have that, they're called soldiers.
    - posnet 11y ago
      Which leads to the appeal of a mechanized infantry that never gets tired, never gets sick, kills without remorse, follows orders invariantly, doesn't eat or drink, has an upgrade path but most importantly can't be killed only destroyed or broken. Sure the first generation won't replace all soldiers and they may never replace them all. We will need logistics and support people of course. Its not a perfect solution. But the second it becomes cheaper to put a robot in the place of a human on the battlefield. They will.
      - sdoering 11y ago
        I do believe, that it is first not a question of money (being cheaper). You do not have images of flag covered coffins returning home. You have no insubordination. You have the possibility to do economic promotion without being labeled as doing such (regarding international treaties (at least here in the EU)). You do not need all these training facilities. Just to name a few. So they will even do it, if it is not cheaper to do (imho). And logistics can be automated as well (delivery by drones, something like fueling done by other drones, and so on). I believe we will see drone-carriers analog to aircraft-carriers being at least semi autonomous as well within our lifetime.
- codeshaman 11y ago
  The main issue is that this advanced tech creates a powerful lever for mad leaders. 1 clumsy cheetah robot at MIT may not be that scary, but 100.000 fully armed and armoured killing machines, which can avoid obstacles and track humans with all kinds of sensors, under the control of leaders wanting to 'right' the wrongs of history scares the shit out of me. At the same time, this progress cannot (and shouldn't) be stopped, but we need to quickly 'evolve' our moral and ethical standards in order to accommodate for these new powerful tools. Just like giving a loaded Ak-47 to a monkey is a bad idea, making this tech freely available to everyone is similarly stupid. And that's because a lot of monkeys are wiser than a lot of humans. Give those humans a button which controls an army of robot killers and they'll press it just to see what happens.
  - snops 11y ago
    Your going to need some pretty advanced manufacturing to be able to make these for the forseeable future. I certainly can't see it being cheaper than humans with AKs for a long while, especially in the kind of environment where your "mad leaders" operate. Besides, the majority of "gain" is being able to fight wars without putting yourself at risk of casualties. A "mad leader" would not care about such losses. The moral issues in this are no different to those of the use of drones, which are very well discussed.
    - kamaal 11y ago
      If there is sufficient demand, advanced manufacturing will just follow. Just see how much smart phone tech has grown over years and where it was before that.
  - paulmd 11y ago
    At least at the moment, the limitation is power. Sure, they built a robot that can run and avoid obstacles, but its battery is probably dead in 10 minutes tops. There's a reason it's running on a power harness in the treadmill test. Unless they invent the Arc Reactor to along with it, those are a long way from the battlefield.
    - 11y ago
- bendtheblock 11y ago
  Like the way drones are used? I think this is an optimistic view of human nature. I suppose these animal robots could help with same-day deliveries.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >this is no different than what every species on this planet has been doing for a few billion years now. You might want to ask those species how that worked out for them. Also, consider how slow the change use to be compared to the life expectancy of the species.
- ryanx435 11y ago
  life both creates and destroys life. to humans, cats are awesome. to mice, cats are monsters. ai and killer robits have a strong potential to be monsters.
- Panoramix 11y ago
  How on Earth is it not different? Wolves/Lions have no machine guns, thermal sensors, armor, chemical weapons, and more importantly, are not controlled by a human third party. This research is funded by DARPA. Not because of its potential to help the elderly, mind you.
onion2k 11y ago
This is an understandable reaction considering how much like the robots in films it is. It's movement is Terminator-like, perhaps unsurprisingly given what James Cameron was trying to evoke when he directed the film. That slow, juddering, 'unstoppable' machine type of movement reminds us of things that are more powerful than we are - heavy machines, trucks, industrial equipment. If it was more rounded and animalish, maybe with a fur coloured coat of paint, I think it'd be a lot less scary.
- shabble 11y ago
  I imagine as the tech matures, some sort of flexible skin will be developed, to protect the actuators from weather and mud/sand, and to muffle the sound of the motors and valves. If you wanted to get really fancy, eInk squid-like camouflage could be embedded in the outer layer. Longish fur might actually work quite well for those 2 purposes, they're not entirely dissimilar from the requirements imposed on real animals who evolved it.
SuddsMcDuff 11y ago
I felt the same when I had my first child.
- jguimont 11y ago
  The hell with the world, I can make my own people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcbOplZHFfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcbOplZHFfg
- joshrotenberg 11y ago
  It's really the subsequent children that you should watch out for. Now they'll have an accomplice.
enlightenedfool 11y ago
Your feeling is normal. But that seems to be the only way humans could defeat death. Prolong brain function and transfer to robots. We will get over it.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
On the plus side, I would hazard a guess that the 'S' part of PTSD is related more to killing people than it is to killing "things". So warfighters who are disabling and destroying the enemy's machines may be much less scarred by that than ones who were killing the enemy directly. As for a generalized fear of the emerging technology, that fear is simply your body's way of telling you that it is important that you get it right (other people will feel it too). Same is true for the advancement in laser diodes for example, or recombinant DNA, or lithium ion battery packs. Growing up is scary, but you can't stop it from happening, you have to mature as it goes along or die.
whyaduck 11y ago
We need to work on creating robotic civilians (bystanders | peasants | victims), too. Then the circle will be complete and the war-makers can burn through their $trillions without actually killing anyone.
superuser2 11y ago
AI and robotics have nothing to do with each other. The first "conscious" algorithm will run on a commodity computer, maybe an ASIC. It would certainly not have the ability to commit violence unless we allowed it to connect to the control system of a weapons platform. It would quite possibly make itself rich, and probably morph itself into a distributed system running nodes on millions of compromised machines (+ the datacenters it buys). From here, AI could possibly buy itself access to things like weapons platforms, but ultimately this is contingent on humans selling them. If a lab has a robot capable of committing violence, and an AI algorithm and it wants to put them together, then yes running the algorithm locally on the robot is probably a bad move. But you could proxy between the AI and the actuators, with the ability to override movements you don't like, for example. The more likely scenario is that these things will be used as instruments of war, running dumb/normal algorithms and controlled by commanders in the field. In that case, just another one of the many creative ways we have to kill each other.

tim333 11y ago

Hopefully the real world version will end up a bit more benign than the movies.

tracker1 11y ago
Right now, the closest we seem to have to a learning machine is IBM Watson, and to be honest, it's really far behind human intellect in terms of adaptive thought. Though maybe in 10-20 years Watson may evolve into something much more capable... As to a robot army + an evolved computer intelligence... that could be scary. It's easy to imagine something like remove anyone that isn't a "pure" X... where X is a combination of racial and religious dogma. In practice, and with practical limitations on resources, it's hard to imagine such an army that isn't outmatched (at least in numbers) by armed people (lets not weaken the 2nd amendment too much).

methodover 11y ago

Ugh, I really dislike this sentiment. Even assuming the most extreme possibility -- that we create a powerful, sentient machine -- this is no different than what every species on this planet has been doing for a few billion years now. Creating life is what we earthlings do. And yeah, maybe that life form you create goes on to do horrible things. But maybe it goes on to do really good things. You don't know until you try.

nodata 11y ago
> this is no different Creating something with our knowledge and the ability to learn ever faster than us is very different.
- icebraining 11y ago
  Yes, but this robot is not that. It's not even a step in that direction.
  - rokhayakebe 11y ago
    Until you have achieve the desired mobility, then tweak it to walk upright instead of using 4 legs, and insert a Watson enabled chip into it.
ZenoArrow 11y ago
Personally, I'm not concerned with that. I'd be more concerned about powerful robots controlled by governments/corporations/anyonewhohasaninterestincontrollingyourbehaviour. Look at what's happening in Yemen. The population there lives under the fear of drone strikes by the US (that includes the civilian population). If governments are prepared to do that with drones, what reason is there to suspect they'll turn down using something that's ground-based to impose control?
- icebraining 11y ago
  using something that's ground-based to impose control? I think we have that, they're called soldiers.
  - posnet 11y ago
    Which leads to the appeal of a mechanized infantry that never gets tired, never gets sick, kills without remorse, follows orders invariantly, doesn't eat or drink, has an upgrade path but most importantly can't be killed only destroyed or broken. Sure the first generation won't replace all soldiers and they may never replace them all. We will need logistics and support people of course. Its not a perfect solution. But the second it becomes cheaper to put a robot in the place of a human on the battlefield. They will.
    - sdoering 11y ago
      I do believe, that it is first not a question of money (being cheaper). You do not have images of flag covered coffins returning home. You have no insubordination. You have the possibility to do economic promotion without being labeled as doing such (regarding international treaties (at least here in the EU)). You do not need all these training facilities. Just to name a few. So they will even do it, if it is not cheaper to do (imho). And logistics can be automated as well (delivery by drones, something like fueling done by other drones, and so on). I believe we will see drone-carriers analog to aircraft-carriers being at least semi autonomous as well within our lifetime.
codeshaman 11y ago
The main issue is that this advanced tech creates a powerful lever for mad leaders. 1 clumsy cheetah robot at MIT may not be that scary, but 100.000 fully armed and armoured killing machines, which can avoid obstacles and track humans with all kinds of sensors, under the control of leaders wanting to 'right' the wrongs of history scares the shit out of me. At the same time, this progress cannot (and shouldn't) be stopped, but we need to quickly 'evolve' our moral and ethical standards in order to accommodate for these new powerful tools. Just like giving a loaded Ak-47 to a monkey is a bad idea, making this tech freely available to everyone is similarly stupid. And that's because a lot of monkeys are wiser than a lot of humans. Give those humans a button which controls an army of robot killers and they'll press it just to see what happens.
- snops 11y ago
  Your going to need some pretty advanced manufacturing to be able to make these for the forseeable future. I certainly can't see it being cheaper than humans with AKs for a long while, especially in the kind of environment where your "mad leaders" operate. Besides, the majority of "gain" is being able to fight wars without putting yourself at risk of casualties. A "mad leader" would not care about such losses. The moral issues in this are no different to those of the use of drones, which are very well discussed.
  - kamaal 11y ago
    If there is sufficient demand, advanced manufacturing will just follow. Just see how much smart phone tech has grown over years and where it was before that.
- paulmd 11y ago
  At least at the moment, the limitation is power. Sure, they built a robot that can run and avoid obstacles, but its battery is probably dead in 10 minutes tops. There's a reason it's running on a power harness in the treadmill test. Unless they invent the Arc Reactor to along with it, those are a long way from the battlefield.
  - 11y ago
bendtheblock 11y ago
Like the way drones are used? I think this is an optimistic view of human nature. I suppose these animal robots could help with same-day deliveries.
Lawtonfogle 11y ago
>this is no different than what every species on this planet has been doing for a few billion years now. You might want to ask those species how that worked out for them. Also, consider how slow the change use to be compared to the life expectancy of the species.
ryanx435 11y ago
life both creates and destroys life. to humans, cats are awesome. to mice, cats are monsters. ai and killer robits have a strong potential to be monsters.
Panoramix 11y ago
How on Earth is it not different? Wolves/Lions have no machine guns, thermal sensors, armor, chemical weapons, and more importantly, are not controlled by a human third party. This research is funded by DARPA. Not because of its potential to help the elderly, mind you.

onion2k 11y ago

This is an understandable reaction considering how much like the robots in films it is. It's movement is Terminator-like, perhaps unsurprisingly given what James Cameron was trying to evoke when he directed the film. That slow, juddering, 'unstoppable' machine type of movement reminds us of things that are more powerful than we are - heavy machines, trucks, industrial equipment. If it was more rounded and animalish, maybe with a fur coloured coat of paint, I think it'd be a lot less scary.

shabble 11y ago
I imagine as the tech matures, some sort of flexible skin will be developed, to protect the actuators from weather and mud/sand, and to muffle the sound of the motors and valves. If you wanted to get really fancy, eInk squid-like camouflage could be embedded in the outer layer. Longish fur might actually work quite well for those 2 purposes, they're not entirely dissimilar from the requirements imposed on real animals who evolved it.

SuddsMcDuff 11y ago

I felt the same when I had my first child.

jguimont 11y ago
The hell with the world, I can make my own people: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcbOplZHFfg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcbOplZHFfg
joshrotenberg 11y ago
It's really the subsequent children that you should watch out for. Now they'll have an accomplice.

enlightenedfool 11y ago

Your feeling is normal. But that seems to be the only way humans could defeat death. Prolong brain function and transfer to robots. We will get over it.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

On the plus side, I would hazard a guess that the 'S' part of PTSD is related more to killing people than it is to killing "things". So warfighters who are disabling and destroying the enemy's machines may be much less scarred by that than ones who were killing the enemy directly. As for a generalized fear of the emerging technology, that fear is simply your body's way of telling you that it is important that you get it right (other people will feel it too). Same is true for the advancement in laser diodes for example, or recombinant DNA, or lithium ion battery packs. Growing up is scary, but you can't stop it from happening, you have to mature as it goes along or die.

whyaduck 11y ago

We need to work on creating robotic civilians (bystanders | peasants | victims), too. Then the circle will be complete and the war-makers can burn through their $trillions without actually killing anyone.

superuser2 11y ago

AI and robotics have nothing to do with each other. The first "conscious" algorithm will run on a commodity computer, maybe an ASIC. It would certainly not have the ability to commit violence unless we allowed it to connect to the control system of a weapons platform. It would quite possibly make itself rich, and probably morph itself into a distributed system running nodes on millions of compromised machines (+ the datacenters it buys). From here, AI could possibly buy itself access to things like weapons platforms, but ultimately this is contingent on humans selling them. If a lab has a robot capable of committing violence, and an AI algorithm and it wants to put them together, then yes running the algorithm locally on the robot is probably a bad move. But you could proxy between the AI and the actuators, with the ability to override movements you don't like, for example. The more likely scenario is that these things will be used as instruments of war, running dumb/normal algorithms and controlled by commanders in the field. In that case, just another one of the many creative ways we have to kill each other.