Why Boston Dynamics is Building a Super Robot Army

[Kornee]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLSqc-p4UhI
Later in the blurb, the narrator quotes BD as being 'firmly against military use of their robots'.
And yet they early on specialized in military applications. Hmm... The decider will be fierce paranoia driven national rivalry for military supremacy.
Therefore we will indeed get terminator robots whether the populace at large likes it or not.

Couple that with e.g. smartphone/internet/drone etc. omni-surveillance. And eventual 'global(ist)' plutocrat governance.
The future is imo not looking rosy for humans in general - irrespective of other pressing political/ideologically driven factors I have addressed elsewhere.

[Yazata]

Boston Dynamics have tried to win some US Dept of Defense contracts, though without a whole lot of success to this point.

But that being said, the day of battlefield robots is swiftly approaching.

Robot aircraft (drones) are already a thing. Governments like them because they don't put pilots at risk.

Self-driving robot army trucks are already being tested that can autonomously drive from point A to point B under all kinds of adverse conditions.

And the day is coming when robot tanks and armored vehicles roll out. That would protect against loss of human crews to modern anti-tank weapons, like we've seen in use in Ukraine. Some might be autonomous and others might have remote human operators driving them by VR telepresence.

And some kind of armed robot "foot"soldier is inevitably coming.

So the battlefield of the future might have far fewer humans fighting and dying as machines start taking most of the risks. Of course questions arise such as whether a country with a robot army might be more willing to put it to use than it would human soldiers.

There's lots of discussion currently taking place about things like rules of engagement for armed autonomous robots.

It's probably the future of 21'st century warfare.

But before we arm robots it's well to remember: Robots never forget. 

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/4PaTWufUqqU

[Kornee]

I think it's clear this will largely become a two-horse race between the US and China for military robotic/AI dominance, with China the likely winner.
Japan is very good at robotics but politically will not be allowed to achieve a potentially dominant military application.
Civilians domestically can 'look forward to' the kind of scenarios seen in 2004 'I Robot' or the opening scenario in 2015 version of RoboCop.