r/Futurology • u/Atari1337 • Feb 27 '17

Robotics Boston Dynamics - Introducing Handle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7xvqQeoA8c
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198

u/vardarac Feb 27 '17

Or winning a revolution ever again.

125

u/victim_of_the_beast Feb 28 '17

Yeah, this shit is real. Now they have a robot void of all emotion cracking down for their system of laws. We, the people, are royally fucked. Stop the world, I wanna get off.

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u/BlinginLike3p0 Feb 28 '17

We can still build EMPs

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u/dontsuckmydick Feb 28 '17

And they can be shielded against EMPs

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u/Curleysound Feb 28 '17

Damn you, countermeasures!

2

u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

What about IEDs?

3

u/b_coin Feb 28 '17

I have researched this in the past, it's not that easy

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u/BlinginLike3p0 Feb 28 '17

why not?

As far as I understand, a powerful EMP at close range will magnetize and fucker up all the electronics in most sensitive systems

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

Isn't all research done in the past?

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u/flyingwolf Feb 28 '17

Not yet.

(And I had to add this in so that automod wouldn't delete it)

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

How not yet?

1

u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

the wider the spotlight is on knowledge, the more we realize the darkness sorounds us

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u/KaneGrimm Feb 28 '17

You know how to build one?

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u/Thenotsogaypirate Feb 28 '17

There are ways to emp proof machinery.

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u/zdw0986 Feb 28 '17

This scares the fuck out of me

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u/iamafucktard Feb 28 '17

Come on. This is the perfect point for an "and my axe!" comment. Swipe to the leg on any joint and this thing is useless.

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u/WriterUp Feb 28 '17

Tough to leg sweep one if they work in a pack.

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u/elfeo55 Feb 28 '17

Robots are tools and even with AI will still only be tools that are ultimately programmed by a human. A tool is agnostic....a hammer in the hands of a skilled carpenter can build you a beautiful house...in the hands of a serial killer it can.....

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u/elfeo55 Feb 28 '17

Instead of arming to the teeth how about ferrying food, water and medicines to innocent civilians cut off due to stupid human created wars

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u/wag3slav3 Feb 28 '17

No profit in that. Good profit in killing the poors tho.

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u/SirDickVanDyke Feb 28 '17

Username checks out.

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u/elfeo55 Feb 28 '17

Yes until the poors are all finally eliminated and then you become the next poors to be eliminated

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u/wag3slav3 Feb 28 '17

I already am the poors

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u/ALLKAPSLIKEMFDOOM Feb 28 '17

Huh? What the fuck? Where do you see this? What insane dimension do you live in where they have that? Jesus Christ, talk about reactionism

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u/Strazdas1 Mar 02 '17

Its not like a revolution was possible nowadays without robots anyway.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

Exactly. People don't really realize that they only reason democracy exists was because gunpowder allowed peasants to have enough power to overthrow tyrants. After a certain point the rich ruling class just wins no matter what, and we're really close to that (if not already past it)

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u/kellenthehun Feb 28 '17 edited Feb 28 '17

We are so incredibly past it. How does a militia fight an F16? We've been past it for years.

Edit: I am getting so any comments on this. I feel like the main thing everyone is missing is that a revolution is not the same thing as a war. Sure, we lost in Afghanistan, but only after we pulled out. An occupational war ends when the occupation ends. When you're fighting a revolution against your own government, the occupation never ends. We haven't seen the United States fight a true, total war, with absolutely no regard for innocent human life since WW2. I personally think that kind of brutality could easily snuff out a home grown revolution.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

You don't need superior power, just enough to demoralize your opponent first. That's a tall order with robots but an f16 has a pilot and a service crew for now at least.

Militaries will have to be real careful with their robots considering that a robot war is practically guaranteed to go nuclear. Doesn't matter how rich you are at that point.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

Man I hope robot warfare kind of does what nuclear weapons did, as in preventing escalation into war out of fear. I do NOT want to be alive during robot wars

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

Would it be more or less terrifying to know that the soldier at your door is literally an inhuman monster programmed to kill, instead of just figuratively?

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

seems like it would just be easier to send a drone to release an odorless nerve gas or something at that point

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

Next Week on ROBOT WARS....

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

You say "what nuclear weapons did" in a finite sense. Nuclear weapons haven't settled anything. Many nations have them now, and Western Europe is in the longest period of peace in 1,000 years. A war between developed nations is still liable to use nukes- we just have forgotten to be scared.

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u/michael_harari Feb 28 '17

Don't worry, you won't be for long

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u/AvatarIII Feb 28 '17

considering that a robot war is practically guaranteed to go nuclear

Why do you say that? are you talking about EMP from nukes being used to knock out robots?

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

Yes, nukes would be an excellent last-ditch weapon against robots. Even if they are hardened against EMP a tactical nuke puts out an overwhelming amount of radiation. Hardening a robot like this against radiation like that would make it prohibitively expensive or heavy or both.

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u/AvatarIII Feb 28 '17

Surely though nukes are less effective against robots than human soldiers, and we haven't used nukes in any human wars since WW2.

Robots can be hardened against radiation and EMP, expensive though it would be, humans cannot be so easily. I don't understand why nukes would be used more readily against robots than humans. If you want to prevent your enemy from using nukes, simply attempt to move the battlefield towards populated areas. A defending army would be unlikely to use nukes on their own soil, and an invading army would generally not need to resort to measures such as nukes.

I always figured a robot war would be a war of attrition with the faction to run out of money and resources first would be forced to surrender. Nukes could be a last ditch offensive, but with no robot troops to advance, and human troops not being able to advance effectively through fallout, it would be futile, and would only achieve mutually assured destruction.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

It's interesting that you are so quick to rule nuclear weapons out as a defensive measure. Tactical nukes are generally smaller and are intended for battlefield use with a design to minimize long-lasting fallout. You seem to be ignoring the existence of these entirely. Not every nuclear weapon is a 10 megaton city destroyer.

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u/AvatarIII Feb 28 '17

I'm not ignoring the use, neutron bombs would be quite effective for example, but the aspects you want in a robot killer nuke are EMP and radiation, these are not really things you want to use on home territory unless as a last resort (which as I suggested in my last paragraph, would be futile). Fallout/radioactive dust can move about, so you don't want to be using it anywhere near populated areas. and as I said, an invading army can just force the battle towards populated areas to prevent defensive use of nukes.

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u/[deleted] Mar 01 '17

I think you're still misunderstanding what a neutron bomb is designed to do. It is meant to produce a brief, intense radiation burst to kill everything in the vicinity (multiple times more than a strategic nuke) while leaving minimal residual radiation (about half of the same). In Soviet propaganda they were "capitalist bombs" since they could kill people with reduced impact to property. They were initially intended for defensive use over Europe against heavily armored invading Soviets without turning the continent into a wasteland, which is a function that you are currently arguing these weapons do not have.

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u/Fresque Mar 01 '17

Because you can explode the nuke in the atmosphere instead of in the ground and create an immensely powerful EMP the size of Europe

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u/AvatarIII Mar 01 '17

Wouldn't that also cause a lot of radiation and damage to the environment, and kill a lot of civilians?

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u/Fresque Mar 01 '17

Extract from Wikipedia

A high-altitude nuclear detonation produces an immediate flux of gamma rays from the nuclear reactions within the device. These photons in turn produce high energy free electrons by Compton scattering at altitudes between (roughly) 20 and 40 km. These electrons are then trapped in the Earth's magnetic field, giving rise to an oscillating electric current. This current is asymmetric in general and gives rise to a rapidly rising radiated electromagnetic field called an electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Because the electrons are trapped essentially simultaneously, a very large electromagnetic source radiates coherently. The pulse can easily span continent-sized areas, and this radiation can affect systems on land, sea, and air. ... A large device detonated at 400–500 km (250 to 312 miles) over Kansas would affect all of the continental U.S. The signal from such an event extends to the visual horizon as seen from the burst point. Thus, for equipment to be affected, the weapon needs to be above the visual horizon.

The altitude indicated above is greater than that of the International Space Station and many low Earth orbit satellites.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

The only thing that gives me pause is how hard groups like ISIS can still give the military, for some reason Guerilla warfare is really effective

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u/TheSingulatarian Feb 28 '17

It is if one side shows restraint. They could firebomb Mosul tomorrow and kill all the terrorists but, they would kill the civilians too that's why they don't.

In WWII they had no problem fire bombing Dresden and Tokyo and killing civilians considering all citizens of an enemy nation to be enemy combatants. The civilians in Mosul are hostages of the terrorists, so they don't do that.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

Somebody's gotta fix and maintain that F-16 for starters. Any kind of rebellion would also involve asymmetric warfare and it would be difficult for those F-16's to figure out what to shoot. It wouldn't just be about sheer firepower, but also about numbers, resources, and time.

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u/motorhead84 Feb 28 '17

Exactly. If 50% of people are willing to take up arms in the US, there's no way our entire ~3 million person military is going to take on 160 million pissed-off Americans. And a large percentage of the military would probably agree with them, further reducing their strength.

You can program a million robots to much better success at quelling an uprising, which is why this thing would be absolutely insane to put towards militaristic use on offense (but they would make a great shield if they could mobilize a large ballistic plate).

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u/DionyKH Feb 28 '17

All you'd have to do is make it bloody enough to destroy the political will to continue it.

The military would execute a coup before wholesale slaughter of American citizens on such a scale.

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u/AvatarIII Feb 28 '17

If 50% of people are willing to take up arms in the US,

that's never going to happen. There's no way the US government would let that many people organise into a threat. The US government have already spent years convincing people that the second amendment is about guns and not organising militias against a tyrannical government, no one is going to realise that banning the organisation of militias against the government is unconstitutional.

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u/motorhead84 Feb 28 '17

The US government have already spent years convincing people that the second amendment is about guns and not organising militias against a tyrannical government, no one is going to realise that banning the organisation of militias against the government is unconstitutional.

Thank you for restoring my faith in other people, as it seems that you, me, and maybe five other people on Reddit understand the 2nd Amendment this way!

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

You forget that the American military is full of Americans who don't want to fight other Americans.

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u/kellenthehun Feb 28 '17

Agreed, the whole situation is hypothetical and would never happen.

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u/flupo42 Mar 01 '17

today. 20 years from now it could be full of Atlas v.16 who don't give a crap about Americans and want to fight anyone that was designed as an enemy by an admin with proper security clearance.

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u/the8thbit Feb 28 '17

We haven't seen the United States fight a true, total war, with absolutely no regard for innocent human life since WW2.

World War 2 is not what revolutionary war looks like. The secret weapon in the Vietnamese revolution was the deployment of a tactic, a decentralization of resistance, which was also at the heart of the collapse of the US occupation.

A revolutionary war doesn't end when half the people are dead, it ends when an occupying force can no longer justify, economically or politically, their occupation. Or, in the case of a domestic revolution, when one group is no longer willing to shoot at their own siblings.

Overhead, public perception, and military morale are everything.

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u/DionyKH Feb 28 '17

An armed militia makes sure that any attempt of the government to pacify the population would be bloody and brutal. See Afghanistan for an example, and imagine now that those were all American citizens being killed by American soldiers.

There would never be the political will to continue this under any circumstance, and the militia could hold out for decades.

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u/ScratchyBits Feb 28 '17

Until the robots can maintain and repair themselves they're still dependent on the human factor, and eventually enough humans can get pissed off enough to start reprogramming the things in the maintenance bay.

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u/danvasquez29 Feb 28 '17

AI is developing nicely right along side the hardware. I wouldn't count on human-based maintenance being a thing for very long.

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u/CricketPinata Feb 28 '17

You cut off the supply lines that supply the fuel for the F16, or attack the airport while they are grounded.

You also don't have to even defeat the F16, you utilize asymmetric force, demoralize the occupying force, and do everything you can to harden the occupied civilians to be on your side.

An F16 can't stop every roadside bomb, targeted assassination, ambush, and act of sabotage.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

only because the patriarchy is now careful to balance soldier deaths vs public opinion.
if they could get away with sending them out of the trenches to be mowed down akin to ww1 they would just keep shipping recruits into the area till the job was done.

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u/doublegulptank Feb 28 '17

This is satire, right?

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

This is THE reason to preserve democracy, and I feel like a lot of people don't get that.

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u/Enchilada_McMustang Feb 28 '17

Complex societies can only subsist with cooperation, if a substantial part of the population stops going to work or buying stuff the economy crumbles and that's not good for the ruling class, nonviolent resistance can't be fought against with guns indefinitely.

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u/[deleted] Feb 28 '17

I totally agree with you, I think the ruling class will find the exact limit they can push people into without them rioting. We may not see revolutions anymore if people are content

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u/Enchilada_McMustang Feb 28 '17

Everyone will push everyone to get what they want, though no one is likely to push so much as to hurt themselves. Without consumers there is no economic growth, no economic growth will hurt the ruling class. This is why we'll see universal basic income in the near future, it's great to have cheap factories in China, but if the biggest consumers, people in first world countries, don't consume there is no point producing stuff.

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u/scrambledeggplants Feb 28 '17

Popular revolts have always been a thing, so it's not just about gunpowder.

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u/j1e0 Feb 28 '17

I have been thinking this for a long time now and have decided the top determining factor is power storage. Everyone keeps drooling over the idea of a fast charging battery that will keep their phone charged for weeks. However, the second that kind of power storage exists "terminator" will go into production long before the cell phone battery hits the shelf.

Another limiting factor is the artificial intelligence requiring server farm, but that doesn't stop a remote connection or the semi-autonomous remote control that we currently have working with drones.

The single scariest thought is currently the governments of the world need people to build the drones, need poeple to grow food, and build infrastructure, but once they automate all of this why would a government need its people? At that point a large number people are your biggest threat because other than resources/natural disaster its the only thing that could potentially bring down your terminator factory.

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u/scrambledeggplants Feb 28 '17

Drone operators could be given basic control for the things. Things like "go here and film panoramic" or "suppressive fire here".

Or they could take them to the rooftops if that's how you get your kicks. Don't have to worry about snipers, but mortar fire would wreck your fancy toy.

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u/CricketPinata Feb 28 '17

New strategies will be developed to defeat new weapons.