[Lambdanaut]

These are the "Big Dog" mules being built by Boston Dynamics, who was recently acquired by Google.

Google has been against militarizing the robots since acquisition, so they're no doubt happy to have this contract dropped.

To be clear, this doesn't mean the project is shelved, it means the contract with the Marine Corps is shelved. Google will be able to focus more directly on civilian uses for the mules from here on out.

[Shivetya]

Well this technology certainly has far more uses than the military, specifically search and rescue. Send these puppies in to hard hit areas, isolated spots, and the like, with supplies and such. The military will get their robots so we have to accept that but we can use all that research into making them do useful and humanitarian missions. No one will care if that rescue robot is noisy.

[jt2190]

In general the amount of U.S. government spending for "search and rescue" is dwarfed by spending on the military. In that context having a military application (or the pretense of one) for this tech gives it access to the money necessary to continue research.

[melling]

Why are they against militarizing robots? It pays the bills. They could start with consumers or business but it's harder to build a market. This makes it harder to fund further development.

Once the technology is developed by anyone for non-military use, transitioning to the military is easy. There's not some magic that prevents consumer developed technology from reaching the battlefield.

[Lambdanaut]

I think it's just a principle thing. The founders built Google on a policy of "Don't be evil", and war-robots may be considered evil depending on your own perspective.

[melling]

My point is that you are still building war-robots, you just aren't getting paid for it. The military will just pay someone else to build the military version.

In 2015, we made great progress in identifying a person with a gun:

http://www.bidnessetc.com/59108-microsoft-corporation-beats-...

Bet this technology soon makes it into drones.

[ceejayoz]

> Why are they against militarizing robots? It pays the bills.

Because money isn't everything?

> There's not some magic that prevents consumer developed technology from reaching the battlefield.

That doesn't mean you're required to actively help it along.

[melling]

You are actively helping it along, you simply lack the ability to connect the dots.

Over the next 10 years, the military should fund building World Cup robotic soccer teams so people such as yourself can feel comfortable with the non-military technology. In year 11, they can add the weapon.

[walshemj]

Google is based on the internet which came out of DOD research

[sitkack]

And the nature of DoD research back then was more generally applicable to things besides killing. The Mansfield Amendment is what turned ARPA into DARPA and pushed to curtail pure research. If you couldn't kill someone with it, it wouldn't get funded.

    The Mansfield Amendment of 1973 expressly limited 
    appropriations for defense research (through ARPA/DARPA) 
    only to projects with direct military application. 
    Some[who?] contend that the amendment devastated American 
    science, since ARPA/DARPA was a major funding source for 
    basic science projects of the time; the National Science 
    Foundation never made up the difference as expected.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA#Later_history

[adventured]

The Internet didn't only come out of military research and spending. A lot of the technology, thinking, and origination came out of the private sector and universities as well. Not to mention the actual early days of the Internet were overwhelmingly private + university based, and not military. Nearly all of the advances that the Web was actually built upon, were not military. The deployment of Google occurred on top of an almost entirely private infrastructure circa the late 1990s. The specific technology stack that made Google possible at the time was almost entirely not military.