Atlas is back, and is wondering if you love Boston Dynamic’s anthropomorphic android, now that it can dance?
The robotics design company recently posted a video titled “Do You Love Me?”, named after The Contours 1962 hit song. The video shows off Atlas’s improved agility through a routine of classic dance moves—and the boogie-bot ain’t half bad. After showing that it can really shake ’em down, Atlas is joined by a matching-model dance partner, with the pair transitioning between the song’s “Mashed Potato” and “The Twist” cues with ease.
The four-legged Spot joins in on the fun with a quadruped version of the Running Man, and even pulls off a bit of pointe footwork while the Atlas duo perform ballet leg extensions—at least as far as their robotic joints will allow. The bird-like warehouse droid Handle also rolls in, shaking its money-maker, ducking and bobbing along with the music.
Atlas has come a long way in a short amount of time: it was just four years ago that Boston Dynamics released a demonstration video of Atlas trundling through the snow, handling boxes in a warehouse-like environment, and exercising good judgment after realizing that its boots were made fer walkin’ after enduring repeated abuse from an in-house hockey hooligan.
But what’s behind this display of the ‘bot’s ballroom boppin’? The droids’ designers included a caption with the video on Youtube: “Our whole crew got together to celebrate the start of what we hope will be a happier year: Happy New Year from all of us at Boston Dynamics.”
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WOW!!!!! We have caught up with science fiction. Should we be worried or is this the natural evolution of humankind?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhqV49us4J8
If this is supposed to make me get the warm and fuzzies for these things, that’s not happening.
They’re Cylons…
…”By your command”.
The future is bright. One thermo nuclear blast would be enough for all our energy needs.
Recently I’ve started listening to the Lex Fridman podcast interviews and what surprises me, so far, is that some very bright people dismiss the existential threat of developing General AI as fantasy. They talk about the “aligning of goals” between AI and humanity and have great faith in the Engineering principles of safety…which I agree with… but they don’t seem to have opened their minds to the militarization of such things and the parallel, massively funded black project efforts that I’m sure must be going on behind several onion skin layers of secrecy. I think public-facing research efforts are playing catch-up to a massive degree….and shudder to think what the current ‘state of the art’ is, behind closed doors.
https://lexfridman.com/podcast/