Kinda weird. I envisage robotics as being the next gigantic thing in technology so its a bit hard to understand why Google don't want this any more.
Except for SCHAFT, who, apparently were also bought by SoftBank today so go figure.
A humanoid robot that can be used for military purposes will have a vastly greater number of civilian uses. I used to work as a welder in a shipyard, and believe me, there were plenty of times I could have used a robotic aid to assist a dangerous maneuver, where one side is reasonably safe, the other Guaranteed Instant Death if the safeties fail.
And if Uncle Sam wants to foot the bill for baseline research, why not? Pushing the coming of useful home/civilian robotics away because it could also be used for military purposes, to me, is akin to not wanting to smelt iron because you could use it to make a sword. In the meantime, people starve without metal plows, and the tech will be developed anyway, by someone else, who will do what they want.
(It is better to be the one deciding what to do with the tech than the one waiting pensively to see what will happen.)
He claimed to regret it in retrospect, only because he learned after the fact that the Nazis were further behind than he thought.
But the benefit of hindsight is not something we get beforehand. When he thought the risk real, he knew there was only one choice to be made.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szil%C3%A1rd_...
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On top of all that, nuclear medicine has saved more lives than the bomb ever took, by multiple orders of magnitude.
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Please don't get me wrong- I am not some war hawk. I do not want people hurt or killed, and I don't want to personally build any weapons. But the sort of hand-wringing that some people do over 'evil' technology... Knowledge doesn't work that way. Information is morally agnostic. And if it has the potential to be used in a harmful way, the best way to avoid it is to be the one that sets the leading tone. Anything else, IMO, is just wishful thinking.
My annoyance with Google's pearl-clutching has more to do with the fact that they treat the entire military need as 'bad', when in reality, 80%+ of .mil jobs aren't even combat-oriented, and the types of robots Boston Dynamics focuses on are clearly intended for pack mule functions or the like. Even if you wanted a strict no-weapon policy, there is a tremendous amount of work to be done in the armed forces.
Arguably the bomb itself has saved more lives than the bomb ever took, by forcing our leaders to resolve their differences diplomatically instead of starting another world war.
Of course, you can't really say in public that without sounding like a caricature from Dr. Strangelove.
But, survive them we did. As he reminded me, there were many people on all sides working as hard as they could behind the scenes to de-escalate tensions, smooth over diplomatic ruffles, calm the angry leaders. MAD was (and is) such a terrifying thought, and enough people understood the implications, that no button was ever pressed. And that is something to draw hope from.
Military robots aren't automatically bad. If used correctly they could stabilize the security situation in some of the most hellish places on Earth, ultimately facilitating massive humanitarian aid.