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Atlas robot does parkour

blog.bostondynamics.com

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Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#211

Post by beeboop »

nostrademons wrote: post #46
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 t…

I think it's rare, at least in the US, to find people who are aware of how fucked up capitalism is. Or have ever given any real thought to how ethical it is. But its atrocities are all around us in plain sight, every time someone dies from lack of healthcare, food, or shelter - or crimes and accidents that happen in the course of pursuing these essentials.

To live in a world perfectly capable (in a purely physical and logistical context) of providing necessities of living for everyone regardless of their output or decisions, but chooses not to, is pretty dystopian to me.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#212

Post by beeboop »

jjk166 wrote: post #163
djrogers wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We were depersonalized by the industrial revolution, and then large numbers of us were killed in the wars that followed. We were depersonalized loooong before that - read up on the 30 years war, or any other conflict before the Industrial Revolution. “Soldiers” of the time were mercenaries, many of whom were pressed in to ‘service’ when their village/town/farm was destroyed by said mercenary company. These mercenar…

Sometimes we forget that the last 3-5 generations were the only humans in history for whom seeing a sibling die in childhood was not the norm. Instead of the industrial revolution dehumanizing us, for the first time ever we are raised from birth confident that we will live long and prosperous lives, that we need not kill nor fear being killed to live in this prosperity. Human life has become much more precious and ch…

>we are raised from birth confident that we will live long and prosperous lives, that we need not kill nor fear being killed to live in this prosperity

Given the number of countries with mandatory military service, and the looming threat of the draft in countries that don't, this maybe isn't capturing the whole story.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#213

Post by gremloni »

leshow wrote: post #132
btbuildem wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As with anything else, we will have countermeasures for drone warfare as well.

Will we? It's not as if there is some countermeasure that will magically even the playing field, things seem to advance in the direction of escalation vs countermeasure.

I totally think so. Laser tech that’s being used to zap mosquitos out of the sky could totally be repurposed to take out drones. Drones are relatively small and disabling them seems like a much easier task than taking down full fledged aircraft that fly much higher and are larger.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#214

Post by pcthrowaway »

noir_lord wrote: post #108
ArtDev wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite scifi series is the Polity Universe by Neal Asher. The Polity are these benevolent AI that rule humanity after "The Quiet War". It is called that because not a single shot is fired because they just take control of all hightech weapons and technology one day. The books would be considered utopian scifi if the rest of the universe wasn't so gritty. Which is why it is my favorite series.

The Culture is the future I want, the polity is the one I could accept. Asher world builds literally better than anyone I know - his aliens feel truly alien . The Hooder is straight out of nightmare fuel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture for anyone who hasn't heard of it. Sounds like an unlikely, but possible future.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#215

Post by squarefoot »

kingsloi wrote: post #19
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…

I get some Black Mirror-esque vibes from this sort of tech, too. The 90s kid in me also gets MechWarrior vibes, too. Also, I looked a while ago but is there anything up and coming in the anti-facial recognition space? I know that some guy created an almost life-like replica of his own face for sale, and then there were some sort of reflectors, but anything that cannot be outlawed, like a full face covering, would be…

A couple years ago researchers found that certain patterns if superimposed to a person's video would confuse some face detection algorithm, but there were still caveats, and it was two years ago, which is a lot in this field.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/23/18512472/fool-ai-surveill...

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#216

Post by tempestn »

rtkwe wrote: post #165
smikhanov wrote: post #164

Honest question: if Boston Dynamics robots are so good, why we never see any news of them cleaning up toxic debris, working in an area of armed conflict, or rescuing people from fires?

They're good at certain things like movement but task planning and execution are still under development. You could maybe use the current version to explore burning buildings but they wouldn't be able to do much more than that, you don't see these lifting shifting loads or dragging things ever which is the kind of things they'd need to do for the toxic cleanup or fire rescue tasks. For the war fighting it's pretty mu…

Note that parent said working in conflict areas, not necessarily fighting. I can imagine various jobs where this form factor might be useful. Clearing rubble for instance, or dealing with mines or other explosives. Each individual task might be better handled by something purpose-built, but a humanoid robot could be more versatile.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#217

Post by SamPatt »

beeboop wrote: post #211
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…

I think it's rare, at least in the US, to find people who are aware of how fucked up capitalism is. Or have ever given any real thought to how ethical it is. But its atrocities are all around us in plain sight, every time someone dies from lack of healthcare, food, or shelter - or crimes and accidents that happen in the course of pursuing these essentials. To live in a world perfectly capable (in a purely physical an…

We've seen multiple attempts at non-capitalist systems, and they have an abysmal track record.

Living standards are way higher today than a century ago.

You are comparing against a non-existent Utopia.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#218

Post by rtkwe »

tempestn wrote: post #216
rtkwe wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're good at certain things like movement but task planning and execution are still under development. You could maybe use the current version to explore burning buildings but they wouldn't be able to do much more than that, you don't see these lifting shifting loads or dragging things ever which is the kind of things they'd need to do for the toxic cleanup or fire rescue tasks. For the war fighting it's pretty mu…

Note that parent said working in conflict areas, not necessarily fighting. I can imagine various jobs where this form factor might be useful. Clearing rubble for instance, or dealing with mines or other explosives. Each individual task might be better handled by something purpose-built, but a humanoid robot could be more versatile.

Mostly only when dealing with tools designed for humans, you can generally design the same tools to be more efficient on a general platform base. And even if you do use them you run into similar problems with task planning and execution. Finally there's power issues with the humanoid shaped bots both in the strength of the actuators (it's hard to have both really strong, fast and precise all in a package that fits) and in providing power to the robot itself. The latter has been the death of many a walking bot intended for the military, batteries don't last long enough and gas power plants are loud and generally bulky.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#219

Post by beeboop »

SamPatt wrote: post #217
beeboop wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's rare, at least in the US, to find people who are aware of how fucked up capitalism is. Or have ever given any real thought to how ethical it is. But its atrocities are all around us in plain sight, every time someone dies from lack of healthcare, food, or shelter - or crimes and accidents that happen in the course of pursuing these essentials. To live in a world perfectly capable (in a purely physical an…

We've seen multiple attempts at non-capitalist systems, and they have an abysmal track record. Living standards are way higher today than a century ago. You are comparing against a non-existent Utopia.

Capitalism doesn't like non-capitalist systems. Any examples we possibly have of non-capitalist structures always have capitalist pressures exerted against them. To pretend that established powers have not consistently and aggressively tried to stamp out threats to capitalism is ridiculous.

>Living standards are way higher today than a century ago.

How much higher would they be without capitalism? Probably a lot.

>You are comparing against a non-existent Utopia.

I realize it doesn't exist, that doesn't mean it shouldn't, or that the reasons it doesn't aren't immoral and unethical.

We have a lot more examples of failed capitalist countries than failed communist ones. Failure cannot be directly linked to a country's economic system. It happens in both for a wide range of reasons.

Re: Atlas robot does parkour

#220

Post by jozvolskyef »

shadowgovt wrote: post #154
BashiBazouk wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I see the four legged dog robot, I wonder how far we are from the chevaline in Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age.

It's easy to forget sometimes, in the era of cars, how much we gave up when most people in industrialized society stopped riding horses. It's pretty hard to get a horse to careen off a cliff or straight into a tree. The largest risk for riding a horse drunk is that it'll inadvertently scrape you off on a low-hanging branch.

Horses are easy to startle and they will crash into a tree at 35mph just to get you off their back when startled. They also don't like people standing or walking behind their backs; being kicked by a horse is a common injury, sometimes fatal.

> Ten army corps were observed over 20 years, giving a total of 200 observations of one corps for a one year period. The period or module of observation is thus one year. The total deaths from horse kicks were 122, and the average number of deaths per year per corps was thus 122/200 = 0.61.[1]

[1]: https://www.mathsnetalevel.com/2406

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