So Google bought Boston Dynamics, I missed this

http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/12/google-acquires-boston-dynamics-a-leading-robotics-company/

Looks like we're one step closer to Black Mesa/Aperture Science becoming a reality!

At least Googz didn't buy Kraftwerk
[youtubehd]VXa9tXcMhXQ[/youtubehd]

Google 2003: "Don't be evil."

Google 2009: "It's hard to define what evil is, specifically."

Google 2013: "We build military robots."

Stolen from Twitter..

I give google 5 years before they're using their technology/research background and immense equity/capital to penetrate the defense market. This is only the first step!

haven't seen this SCHAFT thing before, looks menacing:

via http://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/6882/Googles-SCHAFT-robot-wins-DARPA-Robotics-Challenge-Trials-2013.aspx

i'm just disappointed it wasn't amazon.

as cool as the drone delivery idea is, what i really want is for my prime orders to be delivered by a terrifying, headless, quadrupedal robot.

just been thinking that these may be good for replacing service personell in dada centers

Hah well it's 2014. One article I read about the acquisitions made the point that these are companies at the forefront of sensor technology. It only makes sense for Google to get more involved in that scene.

We could also see this tech turn into things like exo skeletons for assisting people with physical disabilites, like the HAL 5 from Cyberdyne Inc.

we could mebbe also see it being used to kill us all

I for one welcome our new robot overlords

(had to be done)

  On 1/2/2014 at 2:08 AM, A/D said:

Google 2003: "Don't be evil."

Google 2009: "It's hard to define what evil is, specifically."

Google 2013: "We build military robots."

Stolen from Twitter..

I think the HL2:E2 Hunters are considered Synths, i.e. bio-mech hybrids, like the Combine Gunships and Striders.

  On 1/2/2014 at 7:04 AM, Ceerial said:

I for one welcome our new robot overlords

 

(had to be done)

Dammit, Ken Jennings. If dey reach full autonomy and establish their own mechanized hive enclave and wreak havoc on humankind, it's up to him to blow this muthafucka

i'm not worried, my bulletproof sexbot will protect me

  On 1/2/2014 at 7:50 AM, ambermonk said:

I think the HL2:E2 Hunters are considered Synths, i.e. bio-mech hybrids, like the Combine Gunships and Striders.

the life of the party, this one

I'm sure that's true, but their behavior and structure is remarkably similar to the BD designs

http://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/darpa-tried-to-build-skynet-in-the-1980s-1451000652

Google isn't evil. Google now has Kurzweil as lead tech engineer.

Read an interesting interview with Douglas Hofstadter recently on why he thinks current developments in AI aren't nearly as AI as AI is supposed to be - according to Hofstadter, that is.

To a point I agree with him, but would it matter if a droid had his target aimed on you and autonomously decides to pull over the trigger?

  Quote

 

“It depends on what you mean by artificial intelligence.” Douglas Hofstadter is in a grocery store in Bloomington, Indiana, picking out salad ingredients. “If somebody meant by artificial intelligence the attempt to understand the mind, or to create something human-like, they might say—maybe they wouldn’t go this far—but they might say this is some of the only good work that’s ever been done.”

Hofstadter says this with an easy deliberateness, and he says it that way because for him, it is an uncontroversial conviction that the most-exciting projects in modern artificial intelligence, the stuff the public maybe sees as stepping stones on the way to science fiction—like Watson, IBM’s Jeopardy-playing supercomputer, or Siri, Apple’s iPhone assistant—in fact have very little to do with intelligence. For the past 30 years, most of them spent in an old house just northwest of the Indiana University campus, he and his graduate students have been picking up the slack: trying to figure out how our thinking works, by writing computer programs that think.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-would-teach-machines-to-think/309529/

  On 1/2/2014 at 10:46 AM, impakt said:

Google isn't evil. Google now has Kurzweil as lead tech engineer.

That was sarcasm, right?

Were Google always such shady fucks? Or did they legitimately start off as two college kids with a search engine, who were seduced down the path of becoming a media juggernaut with ties to political organizations & weapons manufacturers?

Jokes aside, they really do feel like the company most likely to become some sort of dystopian sci-fi megacorp. They're always about two hostile takeovers & a free wifi package away from owning the internet, & the massive blunders with G+ & Youtube don't seem to be slowing them down.

If I had a multi-billion company, I would spend a lot of that money to fund research in all kinds of sci-fi sounding tech. It's only a matter of time until Google buys a small country and establishes a city which is inhabited by scientists doing all kinds of cutting-edge research in fields from genetics, robotics, AI, nanotechnology and all kinds of other stuff. That's what I would do if I had a ridiculous amount of money and no sight of ever it stopping to come in.

and the scientists will be gay and hold hands and watch the artificial rainbows they're creating, then ride home on their robotic turtles while tripping on LSD, and then stroke their unicorns before falling asleep in the cloud.

That sounds amazing.