[jessep]

My sister choreographed this dance, and I’m a little unhappy that she isn’t mentioned here by name. She’s brilliant, and I want her to get credit.

Her name is Monica Thomas. Her dance company is called Mad King Thomas. Here is her brand new Twitter account: https://mobile.twitter.com/onetruebonc

Her sense of humor is captured by her choice of the song “Do you love me”, which is a winking but still charming reference to the fact that this is a PR stunt to get us to love scary robots.

Dancers and choreographers are poor, and struggle to build careers. A public acknowledgment of something of this magnitude would be so impactful, and would require so little from Boston Dynamics. I wish they would do it.

They could even brand themselves as helping artists, could be good for their image.

[BotJunkie]

I wrote the article; thanks for this info. Since your sister has posted this publicly on her Twitter account, I'll happily add her name to our article if I can get in touch with her/BD to confirm. [Edited to add that we'll contact her before doing so.]

[Firerouge]

The Boston credits her by name in their article

>> There’s a lot of impressive moves in the routine, which was choreographed by dancer Monica Thomas in collaboration with the Boston Dynamics team.

https://www.boston.com/news/technology/2020/12/29/boston-dyn...

They also link her name to https://www.madkingthomas.com/

[anonytrary]

Wow this is extremely wholesome and coincidental. Glad to see the artists are going to be getting the credit they deserve, pretty crazy to see this transpire over HN comments!

[jessep]

Awesome!!! Thank you so much.

[sargun]

I would love to ask a question. In the article they say the following:

> We definitely learned not to underestimate how flexible and strong dancers are—when you take elite athletes and you try to do what they do but with a robot, it’s a hard problem. It’s humbling. Fundamentally, I don’t think that Atlas has the range of motion or power that these athletes do, although we continue developing our robots towards that, because we believe that in order to broadly deploy these kinds of robots commercially, and eventually in a home, we think they need to have this level of performance.

I would love to ask your sister, that is Atlas was a human, what age would it be, in terms of skill of dancer? I think this is an interesting parallel along what people say "This computer is as smart as a 2 year old."

[jacobolus]

As a parent of small kids who just watched the video, I would say 2–3 year old seems about right, assuming kids who do a lot of running around. 3-year-olds can move with significantly more grace (the motions are more intentional, fluid, subtle, and steady, and seem less scripted) than these robots, but definitely can't do a jump precisely the same 10 times in a row, so it's not really apples to apples.

Maybe age isn't the right measure. I would say that these robots move like a 3-year-old kid who has been practicing a particular motion sporadically for a month or two, but not like an active 3-year old who has been practicing the same motion for a year.

If you compare to the kids who do martial arts or gymnastics or some serious sport or whatever, by age 6 or 7 the kids are leaving these robots in the dust. (The robots are still amazing though.)

[jfengel]

I think your estimate of 6-7 is closer to right. I'm not a parent but as a ballet dancer I get involved in a lot of Nutcrackers, which are showcases for entire schools at all levels.

The 5-and-under crowd just generally swarms around the stage, with little attempt at "dance". The 6-8 year olds are beginning to dance, at about this level -- though I would say I saw a few movements by the robots that were remarkably expressive.

It's a bell curve, and there is certainly a right tail of kids who are far better than these robots at age 6-8. The median, however, is about on par.

[jacobolus]

Oh, there is no way you could get a typical untrained 5 year old to follow this whole choreographed routine.

I am just talking about how smooth and graceful the individual motions are. By age 3 kids who practice something a lot (say, running around barefoot at the playground) are starting to get pretty fluent at it.

The kids have a lot more sensory input, a much more subtle and refined musculoskeletal system with a whole ton of tiny stabilizer muscles, and a pretty impressive neural architecture for learning and refining motions, compared to these robots.

(Which again, is not to criticize the robots, which are also amazing! It is hard to beat 600 million years of animal evolution.)

[jfengel]

I was really impressed at how graceful the machines were.

It's not the first time I've noticed that; drones can also be quite graceful. But the dynamic motion of that pendulum is such a hard problem, and as you note, the three year olds solve it with unconscious ease.

Never as gracefully, and there of course the machines have a huge advantage. I spend most of my brain power keeping the tense muscles very tense and the loose muscles very loose, for each and every one of those tiny stabilizer muscles. The machines move straight and smooth in a way I never will. I haven't mastered the simple art of standing there in first position, and probably never will.

(I am not, I would note, any kind of expert. I dance at the level of an 11 year old. Maybe a 10 year old. Which took me years to learn, and I'm very proud of it.)

[jacobolus]

I have never done any significant amount of dance, so am in no position to offer informed advice, but I wonder if explicitly thinking about every muscle is really the best way to practice. Focusing on higher-level goals and letting the sensorimotor system deal with the details might be more effective (and then figuring out how to observe yourself and deliberately working on correcting specific defects).

You might find the book The Inner Game of Tennis useful.

[OJFord]

Probably need to be more specific about 'skill as a dancer' too though - I think you're responding mainly about motor control (?) but try choregraphing a bunch of three year olds to actually perform that routine!

[bostonpete]

Evaluating robots on whether they do what they're told and whether their timing is good doesn't seem too useful. That's the easy part. Pretty much any robot is going to be more precise/predictable/consistent in their actions than any human, let along a three year-old.

[OJFord]

True, but they've been well-crafted to make them so. Just as they'll (I assume) continue to be worked for finer motor control.

[hn_throwaway_99]

I would so love to see some of the original concept videos with the humans who were dancing, I hope they release it. Honestly, I think a "how we made this" video would be just as popular as the robots dancing.

[jordache]

yep! a how we made this video for the robot dance would be much much more compelling than one of those video for an apple headphone

[thih9]

> would require so little from Boston Dynamics

We don’t know that. Perhaps it was important for them to not have credits in the video; e.g. to keep attention on the robots. Your sister is credited elsewhere in BD’s article, see other comment [1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25682864

[jackhack]

One of the reasons for the formation of worker's unions (such as screen actor's guild) is to protect the rights of actors and film workers, at all levels. Receiving proper credit is a big part of compensation. There may be a fine line between a "film" and an "advertisement", and what's more this is surely not a SAG film, but it seems to me that credit for choreography on something like this - where the dance is the core of the content - is appropriate.

[thih9]

> There may be a fine line between a "film" and an "advertisement"

To me a manufacturer doing a video that focuses on their products for their youtube channel is definitely an "advertisement".

> this is surely not a SAG film

SAG states that "Choreographers and assistant choreographers are covered for purposes of health and retirement contributions only." [1].

[1]: https://www.sagaftra.org/who’s-covered

[bigbizisverywyz]

I personally would have loved to see a human dancer dancing alongside the robots, that would have given an interesting comparison.

[mromanuk]

Me too. Wouldn’t be cool if the robots dance along humans, replacing iconic videoclips or scenes? Like the scene of Jerry (from Tom & Jerry) dancing with Gene Kelly https://youtu.be/2msq6H2HI-Y Or Paula Abdul “Opposites attract” https://youtu.be/xweiQukBM_k

[mudita]

This duet between a human dancer and an industrial robot might interest you as well: https://youtu.be/Q-sK-s_TzN0

[nisse72]

Here's a similar video, where the same robot plays table tennis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIIJME8-au8

[mromanuk]

thank you, very nice performance!

[rasz]

You dont want to be anywhere near heavy powerful moving machinery, thats basic OSH. Glitching robot could snap your neck without skipping a beat (so to speak). There are hundreds of videos on the internet of people being decapitated, torn apart and squished by machinery. Not to mention https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Williams_(robot_fatalit...

[kaba0]

These robots are nowhere near the strength of an industrial one, so that’s a bad comparison - it is perfectly safe to dance alongside them.

I am not sure about the exact number, but the dog-like robot can handle at most 30-40 kilos of weight, maybe the humanoid a bit more but in the same ballpark. The most dangerous would be the rolling one, since it has a counterweight, and crashing into someone would be bad but that’s it.

They are absolutely not your average “able to lift 1 tonne” hydraulic arm robots that could indeed barely notice a human as resistence in its movement.

[klyrs]

Nothing a green screen can't fix

[Retric]

Lack of green screen is what made this video so impactful. Having a human dancing on the other side of a barrier might have worked.

[mellosouls]

You can see a side-by-side comparison with the original artists in the video linked in my comment here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25687540

[dkarp]

Here's a 90s version of that from Alexander McQueen: https://youtu.be/ErE7O5NceGQ

[miraculous_cake]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8lblosRKsQ ;)

[unixhero]

She did an amazing job and is talented for sure.

I still absolutely hate those robots. This won't end well.

[0x0203]

I think that unfortunately, when it comes to the public perception, that the movie Terminator did to robotics and AI what Jaws did to the Great White shark. This seems to have permeated western culture in a way that makes it very difficult to have much serious and honest discussion about the technology and I suspect is actively holding the field back. My perception is that in other countries, like Japan for example, they have a very different perspective on what these technologies can do for them and they seem to be much more embracing of it, rather than scared of it.

Both here and anywhere else the Boston Dynamics robots are shown off, half of the comments always come back to the "scary robots" that will take your jobs and murder your family. I wish we could hit a big reset button on how the public at large perceives robots because I personally think that there is a lot of benefit to be harvested here, for the true benefit of mankind.

[thatguy0900]

Boston dynamics itself was started with military funding. Robotics will be an industry with a lot of blood on its hands, even if it does do good as well.

[tandr]

It is unfortunate, but - Internet have started as an ARPA project. First rockets to space started with military funding.

Question is... what are current goals of Boston Dynamics? Do they even see these robots used for non-military widely used scenarios - construction, medical care, first-responders etc? Are these things even possible for the things where cost is an important factor (unlike military, where cost is not that important)?

[jjbinx007]

Without wishing to spoil anything, the robot video reminded me very much of the final scenes of the Battlestar Galactica reboot from a decade ago.

[Cthulhu_]

> This won't end well.

Care to expand on that? I'm very cynical about Boston Dynamics, given that - as far as I can tell / know - they've only done tech demos and again as far as I know don't have significant commercial success, or their robots doing things outside of (carefully orchestrated) tech demos.

disclaimer: I never actually looked on their website for user cases or whatnot.

[yarcob]

As soon as they make a usable remote control for that robot the US military is going to buy a bunch of them and attach machine guns and use them to shoot up "suspected terrorists".

Looking at what the US military has been doing with drones, that scenario doesn't seem that far fetched.

[qayxc]

> Looking at what the US military has been doing with drones, that scenario doesn't seem that far fetched.

This scenario will remain science fiction until we invent a compact power source with an energy density (by both mass- and volume) matching fossil fuels.

The military has no use for loud and cumbersome petrol-powered monstrosities like Big Dog (which is why the project was axed) or underpowered robots with an endurance that's measured in minutes (like Spot) in combat scenarios.

Once such power source is available, though, the independence and versatility of a human in power armour would still be far superior to a remote controlled robot that can be hacked or have its comms jammed with COTS equipment...

[exikyut]

Wait, Spot's power source only lasts minutes?

Ah, its battery runs for 90 minutes.

[qayxc]

> Ah, its battery runs for 90 minutes.

Yep, and that's best case, too (e.g. not running Lidar or complex processing for autonomous function at the same time).

Minutes sounds a bit shorter than it is, but nevertheless anything with an endurance under 2 hours cannot run for hours pretty much by definition ;)

[latencyloser]

Perhaps enough time to drop a few in with a parachute, hit a target, then possibly "self destruct" somehow, if I'm being imaginative I suppose.

[XorNot]

Conversely an army of non-sapient robots would have a lot more options for dealing with belligerents. A human has to fire back when threatened because they don't want to die. A robot can take the hit, and risk being destroyed, because we can build another one.

[eeZah7Ux]

Judging by the use of drones for "extrajudicial" assassination, the narrative of robots as merciful weapons sounds dubious at best.

[bradyd]

Police in the US have already used a robot to execute a suspect after a sniper killed 5 police officers.

https://www.theverge.com/2016/7/8/12129348/dallas-shooting-b...

[XorNot]

A drone at 2 miles up isn't arresting anyone.

[Notorious_BLT]

Given the success (inasmuch as one can call it that) they've had with drones, why bother with mounting a gun on a robot that can barely run for longer than an hour? Wouldn't a remotely-piloted/autonomous vehicle with guns mounted on it be much more efficient than a robot walking around on 2 legs?

I guess I just struggle with understanding how this changes anything.

[tandr]

Weight of what it can carry might be an important factor.

[Shivetya]

Initially they will be a curiosity; robots in the public in general; but public perception is a tricky thing. There will be people absolutely terrified by their presence but some of this can be mitigated by how the robot looks; the more dexterous it is I am willing to bet will make it more scary to some.

however the real bugaboo begins when one is used wrong regardless of where that occurs. like facial recognition we are going to need some serious regulations on how law enforcement uses these. I don't expect issues with fire and rescue but they would get secured by the same laws.

As in, if they end up in use to secure assailants and there is an injury to that target or worse bystanders public reception will tank quickly. Let alone if robots ever got employed against protestors.

that perception will change radically regardless in the world where it happens because not all governments respect the rights of their citizens to the same degree and it becomes only a matter of time before abuse happens and its film.

on a side note, we certainly have enough movies and television presentation of the bad uses of robots; though most if cyborg type; to give people pause but will it give lawmakers pause?

[visarga]

It's not something you can simply outlaw. Progress won't stop, those who oppose it just get left behind. The progress of technology is a force we don't have control over. When writing, the engine or electronics get invented everyone has to get onboard.

[pegasus]

I have the same feeling that antropomorphizing robots these way is a dangerous direction to head in. We are intentionally confusing ourselves into thinking they are something other than they are.

[typhon04]

I think the dog-like robot - Spot is commercial. SpaceX are using one to asses things on their launch pad. But I guess it's truly a difficult problem and they aren't rushing it to market before is good and save enough. Which if they have the funding I think is a good approach.

[qayxc]

Spot is a solution in search of a problem.

SpaceX are using one because I think simply because someone thought it'd be cool. You can remotely inspect a launch pad without shelling out $75k+ using RC cars and drones, for example. It's much cooler and better for the company's overall image, though, if you use a Spot robot. PR is a thing after all and using Spot fits perfectly.

I seriously doubt there's any difficulty with safety or "being good enough", as I've yet to see an application for Spot that couldn't be done just as well by conventional already existing means.

BD is a group of enthusiasts that build cool robots, not a company that primarily develops robotic solutions.

[grkvlt]

their website has an online shop [0] where you can purchase the things and have them shipped to you, to (ab) use as desired - so hardly 'only (carefully orchestrated) tech demos' any more.

0. https://shop.bostondynamics.com/spot

[amelius]

People won't accept them on the streets, that's for sure.

Perhaps they'd have a chance if they used a different form factor, though.

[jcpham2]

Uncanny valley is so real.

[mrfusion]

We need the three laws of robotics now!

[mkl]

Totally impractical. You'd need human level general AI before they could be interpreted and applied, and as Asimov's stories show, they're plenty fallible even with that.

These robots know roughly where they are, what positions their limbs are in, how balanced they are, and what movement they should do next. That's about it. They cannot understand Asimov's three (*four) laws, or even a single sentence of English, and have no choice over their own actions as a whole.

[unixhero]

Now!

[cbozeman]

There's nothing scary about these robots, any more than my Roomba is scary. They are tools, and like all tools, they can be used for nefarious purposes or for the benefit of mankind.

[cutitout]

> It is true that a computer, for example, can be used for good or evil. It is true that a helicopter can be used as a gunship and it can also be used to rescue people from a mountain pass. And if the question arises of how a specific device is going to be used, in what I call an abstract ideal society, then one might very well say one cannot know.

> But we live in a concrete society, [and] with concrete social and historical circumstances and political realities in this society, it is perfectly obvious that when something like a computer is invented, then it is going to be adopted will be for military purposes. It follows from the concrete realities in which we live, it does not follow from pure logic. But we're not living in an abstract society, we're living in the society in which we in fact live.

> If you look at the enormous fruits of human genius that mankind has developed in the last 50 years, atomic energy and rocketry and flying to the moon and coherent light, and it goes on and on and on -- and then it turns out that every one of these triumphs is used primarily in military terms. So it is not reasonable for a scientist or technologist to insist that he or she does not know -- or cannot know -- how it is going to be used.

-- Joseph Weizenbaum, http://tech.mit.edu/V105/N16/weisen.16n.html

[TeMPOraL]

Still, it's a nice way to shift blame to scientists and engineers, away from people who actually use these tools for evil, or commission development of technologies to use in their evil business models.

[cutitout]

All links in the chain are responsible for what they do, there is no single packet of "blame" that gets to reside with any single party, and denying one's responsibility will not make it go away.

[TeMPOraL]

Responsibility is not a chain, and it absolutely does fade away with enough degrees of separation - otherwise you could hold me responsible for looking at a driver the wrong way, which annoyed him past a threshold that caused him to scream at his wife later that day, and made his wife scream at their kid the next day, for whom it became a formative moment, pushing the kid into a life of crime, and 10 years later someone died because of it.

You definitely want to focus your attention on people with most agency over the problem, and those people usually aren't scientists or engineers. And you can't simultaneously praise decision makers for their wisdom and leadership, and absolve them from responsibility because they've only used an "evil" piece of tech they found laying somewhere.

[cutitout]

> Responsibility is not a chain

No, but events are. The question of how to use a tool arises from the existence of the tool.

> otherwise you could hold me responsible for looking at a driver the wrong way, which annoyed him past a threshold

You're still just responsible for your own acts, and they for theirs. If you were being a dick to them needlessly, that's your fault, and if it tipped them over the edge, it's natural to feel bad. Not fully responsible, but also not as if you had zero to do with it.

Just like when someone gets bullied and commits suicide, you don't just look at that act of suicide and talk about who had the most agency and what one should focus on.

> You definitely want to focus your attention on people with most agency over the problem, and those people usually aren't scientists or engineers.

There is no need to "focus attention", and holding one party responsible for their actions is orthogonal to holding other parties responsible for theirs. This is a tech forum, Weizenbaum was one of the greats when it comes to writing about technology and morality, and I dare say it is the responsibility of technologists to be familiar with his body of work.

> And you can't simultaneously praise decision makers for their wisdom and leadership, and absolve them from responsibility because they've only used an "evil" piece of tech they found laying somewhere.

That's why I don't, and never hinted at doing so, and even clearly stated the opposite when I said "All links in the chain are responsible for what they do".

[ufmace]

They're a little unclear about exactly what morality they are advocating for. The nature of weapon technology transforms the way society works.

In the era of sword and shield, for example, combat effectiveness is hugely dependent on raw upper body strength. That means that strong healthy men rule all domains, while women, children, any men not in top physical shape are helpless before them.

In the modern era of mechanized weapons, personal size and physical ability are much less relevant. There's a much greater ability for small groups to make their opinions felt. Victory in large battles tends to go to whoever has the best tech and greatest quantity of it. It's probably a better world overall.

The real question is, exactly how will any "killbots" work, and what effect will they have on society? Maybe they'll be super-expensive and centrally controlled, and nobody better dare to move against whoever ends up in charge of them. Maybe they'll be cheap and plentiful, so anyone with a grudge will be even more able to cause chaos. Maybe something else we can't imagine yet. I have a feeling we'll find out eventually, one way or another.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

Your second paragraph seems rather simplistic to me.

Less-able men with more ability to marshall resources/rewards can convince more-able men to be their proxies by paying them . How would they have the ability to do that? Technology, knowledge, cunning, guile.

How long has it been since the king was the best fighter in the realm? I mean, seriously?

[ufmace]

Well yeah it's simplistic, since it's 2 sentences. I'm not really prepared or qualified to write a 30 page paper on the nature of medieval combat. Yet there seems to be an obvious truth to it.

There are of course exceptions, such as persuading or paying someone else to fight for you, or concealing a weapon, getting someone to trust you, and stabbing them in the back, etc. It still seems to shape much about reality to know that the majority of people will have no chance of ever winning a remotely fair fight against the enforcers of whoever is in charge.

[richardw]

If your Roomba was programmed to hurt me I’d surround myself with power cords.

This looks like us so it’s easier to see how we’re threatened by it. It’s more visceral. My cats don’t care about my vacuum but if it walked and jumped their neutrons might fire differently.

[cbozeman]

I can't edit my original comment, or else I'd add this line:

Everyone afraid of this, you ought to be afraid of micro-drones like the Black Hornet Nano - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hornet_Nano

No one is going to send a fleet of these ultra-expensive Robo-Killers to assassinate you and everyone else on the battlefield. Once these micro-drones can be mass produced cheaply enough, and you can put enough high-explosive on them to fly up to a person's neck and !!pop!! someone's head clean off, you'll see them programmed with swarm behavior and be unleashed onto the battlefield.

They fly faster than you can run (13 miles per hour), have a 1 mile range, and a 25 minute flight time. More than enough capability to swarm entire battalions and wipe them out.

[0x0203]

> Everyone afraid of this, you ought to be afraid of micro-drones like the Black Hornet Nano

>They fly faster than you can run (13 miles per hour), have a 1 mile range, and a 25 minute flight time.

And can be trivially defeated by some netting, blinded by bright lights/lasers, and/or knocked out of the sky by leaf blowers and umbrellas. Despite what certain propagandaesque sci-fi "warning" videos would have people believe, I'm least worried about these nano-drones. At the end of the day bullets are still cheaper, less complicated, and more effective. And as soon as you give the drones some standoff capabilities to mitigate some of the countermeasures, you start loosing many of the perceived "benefits" and are back to just using guys with guns.

[richardw]

That escalated. I started with a few power cords for the Roomba and now I never leave home without a laser, net and leaf blower.

[klyrs]

I agree, that single nano-drone isn't scary. What of a swarm of hundreds?

[0x0203]

Cost and complexity. If you have to send so many to overwhelm and bypass all the countermeasures, the cost and complexity of make it a much less practical and appealing solution than just doing it the old fashioned way. I can't see how brass, lead, and gunpowder will ever be more expensive than light weight plastics/composites, electronics, sensors, motors, batteries, plus the actual lethal component. Add to that the required time/complexity required to configure and deploy, situational considerations such as weather, sensor viability, terrain/environment factors, etc... and we're back to going back to guys with guns. Could there conceivably be a scenario where this might be the best option? I suppose, but in my estimation it would likely be the option of last resort.

If an enemy force has already made up its mind to kill, I don't see this making it any easier/more reliable/more effective than well-established alternatives.

[Shared404]

> or for the benefit of mankind.

Unfortunately, I don't know that I can trust any of the organizations that would have the budget to control enough of these robots to make a difference in any direction.

Which is sad to me, as I love this from a technological perspective and looking at a best case scenario.

[systemvoltage]

Humanity's goal should be to build AGI and let robots take over - we're doing it, willingly or unwillingly. No need to have blobs of meat hanging around. Intelligence itself is human thing. Whether it needs to have a body / physical metabolic processes to run by injesting cheetos all day, is totally absurd. Evolutionary processes have given us so much unnecessary baggage. Pure abstract intelligence is pretty damn human. There is already Neuralink and other hybird tech going on. I believe humans will willingly give up physical bodies in the long term (millenia scale).

This is bound to happen. There is no way it wouldn't I believe, ofcourse in short term, we gotta worry about stuff like politics, solving hunger and world peace.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> Evolutionary processes have given us so much unnecessary baggage

21 years ago, when I started writing a cross-platform digital audio workstation called Ardour, I was convinced that your claim above applied to contemporary mixing consoles. It seemed to be that they had evolved in ways that were deeply constrained by physics/mechanical/electrical engineering, and that there were all kinds of things about their design that was just unnecessary baggage from their crude history.

Two decades later, I understand how that evolutionary process actually instilled those designs with all kinds of subtle knowledge about process, intent, workflow, and even desire. It turns out that the precise placement of knobs, and even their diameter and resistance-to-motion, rather than being arbitrary nonsense derived from the catalog of available parts, rather precisely reflect what needs to be done.

Don't be so quick to dismiss your physical form or the subtle wisdom that evolution can imbue.

There's also the whole "situated action" sub-field of AI, which is centered around the idea that humans build themselves physical environments to embody and maintain knowledge in order to reduce computational load during decision making.

[systemvoltage]

I enjoyed reading your perspective. I find evolutionary processes fascinating contrary to what my original comment imbibes. It’s had a lot of time to optimize :)

[b112]

This is bound to happen. There is no way it wouldn't I believe, of course in short term, we gotta worry about stuff like politics, solving hunger and world peace.

There will never be world peace, unless humanity is no longer human, or alternately, under the boot of an all encompassing empire ruled by force.

To believe otherwise, is to believe history teaches us nothing, nor our knowledge of human behaviour. To assume that we somehow have a culture which "can do this", that our modern beliefs are "enlightened" enough to allow this, is the ultimate in hubris.

Sure... humanity couldn't do it before, but now? Now, we're just ever so enlightened and perfect enough to enable world peace.

There are only two real ways to enable world peace.

1) Genetically engineer the entire species to become more... social. Kill or prevent any 'old style' human reproducing. End the old species. There are innumerable issues here, including "we're just messing around with what we barely comprehend".

Yet our entire culture is predicated upon how the human brain works, and the human brain works more on genetics, than post-birth learning.

OR

2) Take over the entire planet, killing everyone who disagrees with you, and ensuring that due to the technology involved there can NEVER be a revolution. Further, destroy and hunt down every single person which does not swear fealty ; allow no external empires to form. Ever.

NOTE: I am not happy about this, yet, this is reality. Let me put this another way.

You want world peace? OK! Great!

First, you'll need to end all murders, thefts, all anti-social behaviour. "World peace" is denied because of the genetics that create this behaviour. They're the same problem.

[systemvoltage]

Spectrum of humanity spreads wide and there will never be absolute world peace - in the same way, there is no peace in the animal kingdom. As I write, thousands of animals are dying at this very moment, millions of insects are killed. Nature is fucking brutal, my friend. Unimaginable amount of pain was inflicted in the wilderness during this hour.

We're lucky to be able to communicate to each other in civil manner without ripping each other apart for food. Pretty incredible to be a human!

[Answerawake]

>We're lucky to be able to communicate to each other in civil manner without ripping each other apart for food.

That will go away once Climate Change reduces the ability of the planet to produce abundant resources needed for the modern way of life. The remaining carrying capacity of the planet will force a move back to subsistence farming and with that comes the inevitable brutal environment.

[arethuza]

Personally, I'd hope we end up with something a bit like The Culture - which is perhaps the most positive scenario for any society made up of 'humans' and powerful AIs.

[rtx]

Robots are our next steps, we don't need to hang around.

[fsflover]

1) really looks like the world from Brave New World.

[kaba0]

I think you overestimate human intelligence. Surely, as of yet we are the most intelligent thing in the known universe, and the human mind can seemingly discover/invent/understand everything.

But knowing that our math itself has a limit, and we are already pushing that limit with some problems it is naiv to think that the human brain is all that much capable. (Interestingly enough we are intelligent enough to somewhat know our limits - like the complexity of ZFC) While once singularity happens, an AI has basically only material limits to the complexity it can manage (though what I found beautiful is that even that would hit a limit not necessarily higher than we do - like there will be a busy beaver number it can’t reason about)

[amelius]

> Humanity's goal should be to build AGI and let robots take over - we're doing it, willingly or unwillingly.

Yes, but better not make them look human. Humans are bad at tolerating more/equally intelligent species, just look at homo sapiens versus neanderthals. Hell, even between races humans are barely tolerant.

[adamsea]

Shit, I would simply be happy if humanity had a goal.

LOL as for blobs of meat, well, me and a couple other people I know would be unwilling to part with our meaty blobs, for a whole bunch of reasons ;)

[cbozeman]

A Spot costs about $75,000, so as far as trusting the organizations... I mean, I find myself seriously considering buying one.

Yes, I would likely have to add-on other modules over the course of time, but $75,000 for Spot's capabilities is actually pretty reasonable.

[Rebelgecko]

What would you use use it for if you had one?

[cbozeman]

Goofing off, most likely.

I haven't really thought of a use case for the home, although there's literally dozens of them. I actually wonder if it could function as an auto-dog walker for my organic dog on the days when I'm too swamped with work to do so.

The thought of attaching a leash to my dog and the leash to Spot while I'm indisposed is actually kind of attractive. I would have to make sure my dog has already done her business though, since I wouldn't want to be the kind of asshole that not only uses a robot to walk his dog, but also lets his dog shit on his neighbor's yard while a robot walks his dog.

[devchix]

> function as an auto-dog walker for my organic dog on the days when I'm too swamped

Be wary of renting to any penguin, if you do buy Spot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wrong_Trousers

[iancmceachern]

I wonder, would the time spent programming and integrating all this be less than just walking the dog? For me, this would defeat the purpose of having my dogs my our life.

Having worked in robotics quit a bit this is a common trap. There are plenty of things that we can think of for a robot to do, but most of them would require more concessions, programming and maintenance time than it takes to just do the task, or hire folks to do it. The areas where the value prop holds up it really works well, but these kind of low value, high complexity applications like walking a dog around the neighborhood without dragging it by it's collar if the dogs knee hurts and it walks slow that day.

A $75k robot arm with legs is not a completed application. We can already buy robots with the needed mobility to do things like walk dogs for far less. This is a classic hammer nail situation. I think this is the issue that BD keeps running into, they have an amazing team, amazing tech, amazing capabilities, but are still searching for that killer high value application. There are over 400k industrial robots sold every year, its a huge market. They sell well because it relatively straightforward to program and integrate them into workcells and factory lines to create value. To program and integrate one of these robots to do something so complex that it would necessitate a BD robot and not a standard industrial robot would be a huge development effort. It just doesn't hold up when we have folks that need work. The cost of one 75k robot plus two person years of engineering labor is 4 or 5 years worth of traditional labor. The value prop just isn't there until our ability to control, program and integrate these complex robots (cobot stuff) gets better.

[andreareina]

According to BD Spot doesn't do well with moving objects and shouldn't be used around children, animals.

[Shared404]

$75,000 is far enough out of reach of the average person that I think I'm standing by my statement.

[helsinkiandrew]

For the price of one of those robots you can hire a minivan full of armed goons that will do exactly as you tell them todo with less supervision.

[b112]

During development, and initial per-unit sales? Sure.

Once mass produced, not even close.

Think of:

- training costs (training grunts isn't 100% free) - pay as soldiers wait to go on missions - and here's the BIG one, medical care - and lastly?

PR! PR, no more "soldiers coming home in body bags". Why, you can fight any war you want, and no one will get upset about your soldiers dying. Yet beyond that?

How do you negotiate with one of these things? How do you trick them, by walking an "innocent" up to them, and blowing them up?

[grogenaut]

How does one of these things identify civilians or hold a place like Baghdad? Armies occupy. Those weapons destroy infrastructure and people and not much else.

Or do you use them like drones paying soldiers to run them from a container in Kansas. In which case you have the soldier still.

[b112]

Just like drones used to bomb, as you suggest with Kansas.

As time passes though, especially on an actual open battlefield, raw 'kill everything that moves" becomes more of a potential too.

However?

My logic was predicated upon cost, and if implemented, cost reduction due to all those body bags. You think Nixon and Kennedy were purely motivated by the cost of US soldiers, when they wanted out of Vietnam?

They sent those troops there to begin with!

No. They cared about the PR issues, and re-election.

[ben_w]

> How do you trick them, by walking an "innocent" up to them, and blowing them up?

Right now? Regardless of if it’s controlled by remote or by AI, the sensors are probably easier to fool than an in-situ human would be.

[b112]

I'm not talking about fooling. Mass produced, these things would be 10k max. We're talking 10+, 15+ years out.

What sort of fear do robot soldiers have? None. How does it make people "upset", if a robot soldier is blown up.

Now think on the converse.

Right now, suicide bombers take out soldiers, but almost always take out innocents around those soldiers. Often, children are killed.

Now, imagine the locals knowing that absolutely no enemy will be killed, just a machine, but dozens or more of their friends, family may be killed.

How long will suicide bombing last, when the only human casualties are the local population?

[amelius]

> There's nothing scary about these robots

How would you feel if the dance contained some choreographed "mow the people down" moves?

[paganel]

There isn't even a need for that, take the "classic" goose dance, for example, it can be particularly funny, like in this video [1], or out-right scary, like in this footage [2].

It all depends on the context, I can't see John Cleese turning into a genocidal dictator anytime soon, while we all know what the people in the second video did only a few years after those images were filmed. For what it's worth I see the robot in this story closer to the second video than to Cleese's comedic genius.

[1] https://youtu.be/yfl6Lu3xQW0?t=82

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSvS4LY26Yg

[ralfd]

They are more scary the same way a tiger is more scary than a cat even though both are Felidae.

[eeZah7Ux]

If your Roomba was designed by a weapon manufacturer to gain your trust you should be concerned.

If it had the ability to upload detailed maps of buildings you should be more concerned.

If it was designed as an initial stepping stone to develop into a smart and versatile killer robot...

[uniqueid]

They are scarier than your Roomba.

[greatgirl]

A roomba doesn't have the potential to kill you.

[fsflover]

It has a potential to sell info about you though.

[notum]

Mount a knife on it.

Though to day, the most dangerous murderous machines we have created have been cars.

[slavik81]

Your wish is my command. https://youtu.be/OwtxWL0P9wA

[caturopath]

Done.

What's next?

[fsflover]

Now wait until you fall on it.

[blackrock]

This robot is Version 1.0.

And yes, it’s just a puppet. For now. A human controls its movements.

What’s missing is a brain. And that will come in Version 4.0. Or whenever they perfect a decision and control system, for fully autonomous decision making.

That’s when you should worry.

Or rather. You’re probably safe, if you live in one of the western allied nations. That is your privilege.

But a black, brown, red, or yellow person in the 3rd world should worry. Because they will be the target of America’s oppression, via this robot.

Meaning that: your 3rd world country had better accept democracy and western media, and have your leaders approved by Washington DC, otherwise we will deliver some freedom to you. I hope you enjoy the fresh smell of napalm in the morning. You get bonus points if your country has oil.

[inglor_cz]

It is crazy to see from the outside how the color-of-skin obsession permeates every single conversation right now. I hope that the USA will be able to find some other topics and arguments one day.

It is also false in this context. One of the most massive bombing campaigns in recent history was in European Serbia, and the hotspots of today (Syria, Iran) have a population that looks like Greeks.

As for black: the only predominantly white country that systematically sticks its fingers into Subsaharan Africa is France. The only external power that grows its presence in the Third World overall is China and given how they treat their own population, I would not be surprised if the next wave of pseudocolonial wars was Beijing's.

[AussieWog93]

If you're going back to the 80's, don't forget South Africa's campaigns in Angola.

[rtx]

We already have scarier robots, they are called self guided missiles. You don't have to imagine this new world.

[throwaway342422]

> your 3rd world country had better accept democracy ... approved by Washington DC

...or accept replacing a democracy with an us-friendly "anticommunist" dictatorship.

[casey77]

Prior to reading your comment, I read the article and my main takeaway was how impressive the choreographer was and how I wouldn’t have expected the engineers to rely so much on the choreographer. So it is great to see your comment and I agree with you. But the article did give at least one person more appreciation for choreographers.

[aresant]

Often the people who are doing the actual PR work have no idea about the story details and piece stuff together third party

I would encourage her to reach out to the marketing/PR department and have a conversation avail herself for interviews etc.

I would imagine that a young woman doing something this dynamic in a relatively dry field would actually be a PR dream.

[llamataboot]

And i imagine there were lots of folks involved in all phases of doing this at Bostons Dynamics that consciously or unconsciously thought of her as just another hired person to promote their technical brilliance.

[Waterluvian]

>...Do you love me”, which is a winking but still charming reference to the fact that this is a PR stunt to get us to love war machines.

Neat Easter egg. Though I'm not sure I can reconcile being both critical of and centrally involved in the same PR stunt.

[kn8a]

She did an awesome job. The article implies that the choreography was reviewed by an engineer who would script the moves? Then article says then there is a pipeline that doesn't need scripting? The main question I was wondering is it possible to do this with mocap alone? Surely the closer artists can get to sculpting the tech the more opportunities for creation are possible.

[notretarded]

Why would they? What business sense would this make? The image they want to portray would be that they are capable of everything in-house - Their staff are not only experts in robotics but also art too. In reality it's not quite true.

Just like you also don't see them saying "Thanks to PwC for developing our software."

[wiz21c]

Very good sense of humor indeed. I caught the "do you love me" question instantaneously and wondered who got that very good idea. As always, the good idea didn't came from the PR department :-)

[exikyut]

I'm extremely interested to learn how the dance moves were programmed - I'm guessing the standard tablet controller probably doesn't cut it for the level of control necessary.

More generally speaking, I'm especially curious if "anyone" buying a Spot would have adequate access to be able to do similar things.

I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to not been possible for warranty reasons...

[LeifCarrotson]

I believe so; see https://dev.bostondynamics.com/docs/concepts/choreography/ch... for the choreography API. You don't even have to buy a Spot to write the code, which is impressive in this industry! Now we just need someone to buy one and set it up in front of a webcam with a public SSH login.

There's more documentation at https://github.com/boston-dynamics/spot-sdk and https://dev.bostondynamics.com/. However, it looks like a lot of the choreography is built-in; you can call twerk() or butt_circle() (documented at https://dev.bostondynamics.com/docs/concepts/choreography/mo...) but you don't have access to the raw kinematics, gyros, and accelerometers to generate your own unique moves. It would be amazing if they'd release the full routine to cause your Atlas or Spot to perform the dances, but I'm not aware of that being public anywhere.

For a more general example, check out this video where Adam Savage used a Spot to pull a rickshaw; his programmer was able to work with the API to change the payload tuning of the robot:

https://youtu.be/zyaocKS3sfg?t=1482

It appears that the API is more about what you'd need to make Spot useful in an industrial or demonstration context than to build your own Spot. They want something that a generalist can make do useful stuff out-of-the-box, which makes sense.

[exikyut]

Apologies for the delayed reply, and thanks very much for this comprehensive answer. I've been curious for a little while, and this pretty much answers that curiosity completely.

[rtx]

The choreography was my favourite part, it's hard for me to even think how do you plan that.

[johnx123-up]

FWIW, https://www.madkingthomas.com/content/who-monica is 404

[totetsu]

Can't be every day she gets to choreograph for a quadruped.

[joopxiv]

Also, the song is about be able to dance...

[riantogo]

Followed, liked, retweeted. I had loved the choreography and I'm glad I now know who was behind it. Please tell Monica that we await here next piece of art.

[anoncow]

Art > Science