Boston Dynamics' Robot Is a 'Nightmare' of a Different Kind

Videos of new robot advancements typically throw the Internet into full buzz style, consummate with headlines well-nigh Terminators and "robot overlords." While some of these bleeding-edge bots are terrifying, information technology's not for the reasons all the click-bait headlines would accept y'all believe.

Opinions If you lot're fifty-fifty a casual follower of the Internet's viral videosphere, you've undoubtedly stumbled beyond the latest clip from Boston Dynamics, the Alphabet-endemic (for now) robotics firm. What BD lacks in a clear path to profitability, it has made up for with a steady stream of sci-fi-tastic videos. Its latest video offering is no dissimilar:

Even so, unlike those past video hits, this latest footage wasn't published to BD's official YouTube page. Instead, information technology was rather serendipitously captured during a live presentation to investors and uploaded by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson (complete with Jurvetson's near-orgasmic groundwork narration).

The leaked video shows an auditorium full of financial types reacting positively as BD founder Marc Raibert showcases the company'due south newest mechanical animals on a screen backside him. However, the audience's biggest reaction is reserved for footage Raibert describes as a "nightmare-inducing robot."

This new mechanical nightmare, dubbed "Handle" (considering it is designed to handle things, get it?), is a human-sized robo-equus caballus which manages to go on itself counterbalanced upright (even jumping) atop a pair of wheeled legs. Different by walking machines, Handle'south wheels allow it to effortlessly and quickly glide through various types of environments, indoors and out.

Boston Dynamics Handle Robot

To be sure, Handle is an astonishing instance of future-cool. But it was interesting to sentry various media outlets rush to appropriate Raibert's term and describe the video every bit "nightmarish." The Verge, Yahoo, and Tom'southward Hardware were simply a few notable outlets using the word in their headlines.

These lumbering machines are clearly yet a work in progress, and are indeed eerily reminiscent of fictional metal monsters like The Empire'southward armada of AT-ATs or the bipedal ED-208 from RoboCop. However, the biggest threat these humanoid bots pose isn't to our physical safety but rather to our economic futures.

While modern robotics is in no danger of delivering an advanced humanoid robot akin to The Next Generation'due south Data someday soon, the industry is miles alee of where it was fifty-fifty a decade ago. Handle is speedier and more versatile than previous bipedal bots, but as well cheaper, Raibert says, which should terrify a whole sector's worth of homo workers.

Author Martin Ford'southward non-fiction volume Ascent of the Robots is i of the best (and near frightening) books on impending mass technological unemployment (i.e. when software and robotics advance and so far and so fast that human workers tin can no longer compete). Originally published in 2022, Ford mentions that one of the merely things keeping companies like Amazon from completely automating their warehouses is that engineers have yet to figure out how to make machines that can catch and comport objects of varying sizes. Brand no basic nigh it: full automation is Amazon's ultimate goal, and one which countless engineering teams are diligently working to assistance make a reality.

If you combine Handle's impressive locomotive abilities with BD's second-generation Atlas bot (which has some impressive grasping abilities; come across below), and then information technology's non difficult to see how hundreds of thousands of warehouse employees could soon be replaced past a robot workforce that doesn't demand annoying things like luncheon breaks, safe working environments, pay, or sleep.

This coming labor disruption won't simply be contained to warehouses—any job that requires simple tasks similar transporting objects from one location to some other (previously only the domain of humans) will be automatable. Consider the one thousand thousand-plus who work as commitment truck drivers; the hundreds of thousands of mail carriers; or untold number of pizza delivery professionals (in which case, automation might not be such a bad thing).

Aside from cost, the ii biggest hurdles standing in the mode of commitment/transportation bots going mainstream are creating machines that ane) can move about in various environments and 2) grab varying types of objects. If we're going by these recent videos, it appears that firms similar Boston Dynamics are painfully close to crossing that engineering Rubicon.

These humanoid laborers are nowhere near prime fourth dimension, but consider where this technology was a decade ago. New technologies similar Handle show how precariously close certain skill sets are to being rendered obsolete. These bots may await sci-fi frightening at beginning, simply the real nightmare will be the changes their presence brings near in society once they enter the workforce.