Motherboard

Sometimes I find it pretty ridiculous that anyone could actually be worried about robots invading us and making us their love slaves in schlumpy beige sweaters from the future, just like in science fiction movies. For starters, if we are the ones building the machines let’s just, like, build them not to kill us. And for another thing, there are far more insidiously dangerous machines already among us that should cause us far more alarm than a harmless little robot army. Machines like laptops that cleverly distract our airplane pilot from flying the airplane. Or computers that beguile truckers. Or toasters that, when joined with bathtubs, are super duper deadly. Or microwaves that fry our brains when we cook our pizza bagels in them with our head inside the microwave because it smells so cheesily delicious. Wait, you do that, too, right?

Shouldn’t we be plenty concerned with and preoccupied by all this stuff getting in the wrong hands? Who has time to worry about robots?

These guys, that’s who. And they are so worried about them that they apparently have decided to preemptively construct robots that can do anything humans can do—and scarier. Just check out the 40-second mark of this video when a headless robot zipping along like a power-walking Palm Springs doyenne suddenly shifts into Terminator mode, which of course precipitates violent rampaging. If they can build a beast that disguises itself as a Sunday-sauntering retiree, then I suppose we really might be in trouble. These are the same guys, after all, who made a much smaller ’bot that is able to leap tall fences in a single bound.

What does all this mean for you and me? We should keep a damn close eye on Boston Dynamics, among other things. They are well on their way toward organizing a large and versatile army of robots and so far have not made themselves available to the public (well, I asked them once for an interview and they said they were busy, but maybe later). What are they hiding??? Mostly kidding here, BD, but still — please don’t kill us, okay?

In closing let me quote from a commenter on YouTube who has watched the PETMAN video:

“I am fascinated, but also scared. We all know from experience that brilliant invention could be used for abhorrent things. And the worst is, it’s paid by people which didn’t have charitably motives. The worst is yet to come!”

Oy.