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Atlas robot does parkour

blog.bostondynamics.com

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Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#41

Post by jvanderbot »

delgaudm wrote: post #8

I'm not a particularly pessimistic person in general, but I don't know ...this tech, while cool, feels like the precursor to a worse future in general. Maybe I've seen too much sci-fi, but these robots look like optimizing for future soldiers, law enforcement etc. Given all the other Self-Driving / Facial Recognition / Loss of Privacy / Deepfake / "AI is bad at recognizing $situation"-type posts, and as all these tec…

Boston Dynamics exec: "That's a sensing problem, we are a controls and dynamics company".

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#42

Post by scythmic_waves »

moralestapia wrote: post #7

Anyone else thinks the video looks a lot like CGI? Nice job, nonetheless.

I also think that. But it appears we're both being downvoted for saying so.

I'm not sure I understand why? HN is usually pretty tolerant of healthy skepticism. And it's not as if we're saying "this feat is impossible, Boston Dynamics must be lying". We are (or at least I am) saying "the thing I'm looking at doesn't look real".

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#43

Post by lifty »

delgaudm wrote: post #8

I'm not a particularly pessimistic person in general, but I don't know ...this tech, while cool, feels like the precursor to a worse future in general. Maybe I've seen too much sci-fi, but these robots look like optimizing for future soldiers, law enforcement etc. Given all the other Self-Driving / Facial Recognition / Loss of Privacy / Deepfake / "AI is bad at recognizing $situation"-type posts, and as all these tec…

If we retain the same semi-centralised power structures for governing society, then I think it's unavoidable that we will face the scenario you mention. We need to decentralise governance and power in a massive way if we are to avoid negative effects from these incredibly powerful technologies.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#44

Post by ClumsyPilot »

mc32 wrote: post #25
delgaudm wrote: post #8

I'm not a particularly pessimistic person in general, but I don't know ...this tech, while cool, feels like the precursor to a worse future in general. Maybe I've seen too much sci-fi, but these robots look like optimizing for future soldiers, law enforcement etc. Given all the other Self-Driving / Facial Recognition / Loss of Privacy / Deepfake / "AI is bad at recognizing $situation"-type posts, and as all these tec…

If they were ever deployed as auxiliaries to law enforcement, my hope would be any weapon would have to have a human approve a request. Robots should be able to swarm and restrain uncooperative suspects so there should be less need for lethality unless the perpetrator is an active threat against other people -a hostage situation, mass shooting, etc.

Arming law enforcement robots must be illegal- the whole point is that you can risk the robot to restrain a suspect, it doesn't need to defent itself like a police officer does.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#45

Post by qiqing »

jvanderbot wrote: post #35

This is awesome, but until someone solves the real-time sensing and modelling problem, it'll never fly in the real world. The use case is still warehouses. Here's my logic / assumptions: How does the robot "know" (have sufficient model information to predict the response) that the board will hold it when it does a vault? It doesn't -- it is told to vault by placing one limb on top. As we've seen with self-driving car…

Wouldn't it be great, though, if humans were no longer working warehouse jobs that strain their backs and their bladders?

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#46

Post by nostrademons »

delgaudm wrote: post #8

I'm not a particularly pessimistic person in general, but I don't know ...this tech, while cool, feels like the precursor to a worse future in general. Maybe I've seen too much sci-fi, but these robots look like optimizing for future soldiers, law enforcement etc. Given all the other Self-Driving / Facial Recognition / Loss of Privacy / Deepfake / "AI is bad at recognizing $situation"-type posts, and as all these tec…

Boston Dynamics was initially DARPA funded and intended for military uses, so you're not wrong.

The weird thing is that the more I study history, the more I think that the real dystopia started a century (and perhaps a couple millenia) before I was born, and we're just so adapted to it that we think it's normal. Take the "[Ro]bot" out of your headlines and those would be headlines from today, and if you ignore that the media never bothered to report on those a century ago, they'd be headlines from a hundred years ago. We were depersonalized by the industrial revolution, and then large numbers of us were killed in the wars that followed.

In some ways, this gives me a weird sort of hope that our descendants will welcome their robot overlords. In others, there's a melancholy foreboding that our descendants will welcome their robot overlords.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#48

Post by jjkaczor »

trenning wrote: post #29

Can we brainstorm how you would compromise one of these robots? I don't think I've seen discussion about how you would stop one in an adverse situation. Hogtie cowboy style? Taser? Paint splashed over sensors?

People are begining to post some things:

https://twitter.com/LenKusov/status/1364640007101775872

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#49

Post by prepend »

trenning wrote: post #29

Can we brainstorm how you would compromise one of these robots? I don't think I've seen discussion about how you would stop one in an adverse situation. Hogtie cowboy style? Taser? Paint splashed over sensors?

Funny, I was thinking the same thing.

I was thinking some high strength fishing line fashioned into a bolo sling would be cheap.

Or maybe just some “invisibility cloak” made out of astronaut blankets.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#50

Post by mc32 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #37
mc32 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were ever deployed as auxiliaries to law enforcement, my hope would be any weapon would have to have a human approve a request. Robots should be able to swarm and restrain uncooperative suspects so there should be less need for lethality unless the perpetrator is an active threat against other people -a hostage situation, mass shooting, etc.

Robots will be the new zip ties to restrain you while your rights are violated. It’s not a tech failure though, it’s a governance and accountability failure.

Do do we want more uniform enforcement via robot, or do we want more leeway for human LEOs?

It used to be cops could make their own decisions on the spot about a subject (good or bad), now with cameras there is much much less ad-hoc decision making. Everyone gets booked.

It’s a double edged sword. Depends on what we want.

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