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.

Thanks, we are all enlightened by your contribution. 👍

Must be nice to be so confident in your worldview

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.

That was Ghost Robotics. Different company

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?