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Atlas robot does parkour

blog.bostondynamics.com

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Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#91

Post by lifty »

ghaff wrote: post #60
lifty wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you look around the world (and across history), the natural outcome of weak central institutions is more along the lines of feudal warlords than something utopian.

You're right. So what we need is strong institutions which are controlled by decentralised power levers. What I have in mind is cryptographic based control combined with concepts from liquid democracy.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#92

Post by sandworm101 »

jvanderbot wrote: post #80
sandworm101 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> hybrid control scheme with a human controlling a smart-ish legged vehicle Much depends on scale. BD is working towards a robot-donkey, something that can follow soldiers over rough terrain. At scales much larger than a horse, such robots already exist and are already much more mobile than soldiers in most terrains. These robots are called tanks. Or trucks. Once a vehicle is carrying a large enough load that it wil…

In hindsight of all of 5 minutes, I agree with you. But, I read somewhere that only 20% (ish) of the earth's surface is accessible by wheeled / tracked vehicles. I guess the important part is that's where the people are .

Well, 70% is oceans. So of the land 20% would be the majority of terrain. Also, hovercraft probably push that number even higher.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#93

Post by okwubodu »

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…

It would take a lot. Humans can be incredibly brutal when their opponents aren’t alive. Autonomous drones are more of a threat and even then a ballon full of string would put most out of commission.

edit: that’s not to say they’ll never be an issue. They almost certainly will, but fighter jets can’t hold ground and neither can any robot.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#94

Post by claudiulodro »

mrfusion wrote: post #67
nostrademons wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

When and how did the real dystopia start?

Some would argue that it started with agriculture:

> According to anarcho-primitivism, the shift from hunter-gatherer to agricultural subsistence during the Neolithic Revolution gave rise to coercion, social alienation and social stratification.

> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-primitivism

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#95

Post by ryandvm »

mc32 wrote: post #61
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It would be useful in circumstances they might work best. Hostage situation, mass shootings. We don’t want to have to wait till a human LEO shows up to incapacitate the perp.

You're not wrong, but those circumstances are so exceedingly rare that activating an armed robot should require a warrant or some other way of rate-limiting their invocation.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#96

Post by scarecrowbob »

mrfusion wrote: post #67
nostrademons wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

When and how did the real dystopia start?

Well, there are a lot of Ute folks around where I live, and as far as I can tell many of them think we are living at the end of the apocalypse.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#97

Post by lifty »

mrfusion wrote: post #72
lifty wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> We need to decentralise governance and power in a massive way Agreed but I’d also like to see human rights protected from the new decentralized governments. Not sure how that could work.

We could mandate that all AI robots should load an abide by a digital constitution that has been cryptographically signed by a majority of the population.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#98

Post by jvanderbot »

sandworm101 wrote: post #92
jvanderbot wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In hindsight of all of 5 minutes, I agree with you. But, I read somewhere that only 20% (ish) of the earth's surface is accessible by wheeled / tracked vehicles. I guess the important part is that's where the people are .

Well, 70% is oceans. So of the land 20% would be the majority of terrain. Also, hovercraft probably push that number even higher.

Well, 10 minutes of googling didn't return the information I needed, so we'll go with "Most of the non-water surface of earth is accessible to tracked vehicles"

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#100

Post by rebuilder »

qiqing wrote: post #45
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?

Depends on who profits.
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