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Comment by brd | Hacker News Reader

Reading the headline the first words out my mouth were "holy shit"

Not only does this bring some serious engineering talent to Google's robotics initiative, this acquisition should create some interesting new interactions between Google and the government moving forward.

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My first thoughts were along: "Nope" and "This is how the robopocalypse starts".

Google & BD are both researching machine learning, it only makes sense for Google to buy them.

Both will sure gain from each other talents and data. Robotics for the self-driving car, and a brain for the humanoïds. Aweso... well not so much.

I'm so glad to see that, that I am not the only person with such dual reaction - This is sooo awsomme tech! & ok, were it is going might not be so cool at the end...

Agreed - My first reaction was "Google == Cyberdyne Systems". I hope a lot of good comes out of this, but I cannot help but think of worst case scenarios. Then again, maybe I consume too much sci-fi movies and books.

It doesn't help that the robots produced by BD look a bit like the ones from "robots versus humans" movies. This acquisition feels a bit scary, but also very exciting. In reality, self-awareness is probably far enough away that we don't have much to worry about for now.

Robots won't be that scary when they are self aware. It is at the stage just _before_ self awareness where they are easily controlled and very powerful.

You only need to read the news about what the government is doing with drones abroad, or with military equipment at home to think at worse case scenarios.

Seriously. These were precisely the first words out of my mouth as well.

Worth pointing out that Ray Kurzweil[1] is the director of engineering at google, Peter Norvig[2] is the director of research, and they recently snatched up Geoffrey Hinton[3] and several of his grad students.

Not sure if excited or terrified. The future of google is going to be very interesting...

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil [2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Norvig [3] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoffrey_Hinton

"The director of" is misleading, it is a director (there are at least two higher positions: VP and SVP).

Thanks for spotting this and pointing it out.

I'll take your word for it about Kurzweil. The wiki also says "a director" - good catch.

Here's what google says about Norvig though: http://research.google.com/pubs/author205.html

FWIW, I don't think reporting to higher ups (e.g. VP, SVP) precludes someone from being "the director" if there are no other people in the department with this title / position.

There is at least Alfred Spector who is a VP and in charge of research: http://www.theguardian.com/activate/alfred-spector

But yeah, Norvig is probably a little bit more than "a" director :)

Ben Horowitz: "Larry Page, in contrast, seems to have determined that Google is moving into war and he clearly intends to be a wartime CEO."

I know it's been said, and at this point it's kind of cliche, but I feel like I'm living in a sci-fi movie more SNF more with each passing day. This is all very exciting stuff.

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