It’s amazing how quickly you can get used to stuff like this.
Also: my wife would like to remind you that the bit at the very end is not actually the robot playing with the person. Although that’d make for an interesting story. At what point do the androids get souls?
Sure, all demos are fake, but: this Atlas one from Boston Dynamics is pretty good stuff.
And I understand why all the business with the sticks and the pushing. It’s actually bragging: Hey, look, our robot can handle a few trivial tasks that the rest of you have spent years trying to work out for yourselves. But in some weird sort of way it just identifies as not-quite-nice. I mean, I know: that robot is neither ‘alive’ or ‘aware’ in any meaningful sense of the term. But you see the four limbs and a body and a head in an upright position, and the mental reflexes kick in…
