Given the choice of fighting robot humans with guns, robot wolves with guns, robot spiders with guns, and robot velociraptors with guns, I’m pretty sure I would take the first as the least dangerous sounding.
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Again, no reason to use a humanoid form-factor for that. We have many kinds of killer machines already and none of them look like human beings.
Why on earth would the Pentagon want a battle-droid that had to balance on two fragile legs and carry a gun designed for human hands when they could have a tiny high-speed electrified tank that had omnidirectional sensors and built-in precision turrets?
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We’ve been emulating human forms as dolls, icons and automata for literally millennia …
Totally. It’s apparently just something that we do - regardless of the supposed utility, which is kind of silly justification concept when you think about. The idea that human activity at-scale follows some kind of ostensible rationality is pretty much debunked even in economics circles at this point.
If I had to guess as to why many people find creating artificial humans or the images of humans to be an interesting pursuit, I’d venture that it is a fruitful avenue to study and engage in greater depth with aspects of our physical and experiential nature. It’s only in an examination that is constrained and supported by the strictures of present methods of art, be those marble carving, oil painting metal working or advanced cybernetics that we get to really grapple with, understand and consciously re-capitulate those appreciations.
In essence all media and communication technology, clay tablet, printing press to 4k projection and surround soundsystem is a long arc of replicating the human sensorium via mechanical forms - at some point the body itself becomes a stage in that trajectory.
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… not Boston Dynamics
From the time of the command to the completion of the task it took that robot about 1 minute, 15 seconds to move the box from one place to another. I can see why Boston Dynamics’ “Stretch” robot, which is non-humanoid but much more practical, is their big seller.
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And your point is? 
Edit @jerwin I love how hard Nick Frost commits to his action scenes. He was great in “In to the Badlands”
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Like this one, which is not nightmare inducing at all!
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I’m mailing in my check right now!
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My first thought was, “Wow, he’s really bringing that Bajie energy!” 
On the robots in healthcare front, it sounds like more design and development work will be needed:
there are also deeper structural factors at play, including a research and development ecosystem narrowly focused on technological solutions that fails to see the bigger picture of Japan’s care landscape. Engagement with the care workers and care recipients who are the intended end users of these devices is disincentivized, leading to sometimes simplistic assumptions from engineers about what care is and should be, which conflict with the lived experience of those who give and receive care.
I guess there’s a lot of profit to be made in over-promising and under-delivering tech solutions. 
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My first thought was that I’d love to have a robot slave to do all the tedious chores around the house. Including all the stuff that special-purpose devices can’t do, like vacuuming the baseboards and washing the things I don’t want to put into the dishwasher.
Then I remembered how much time I spend gaffing about with tech that doesn’t want to do its job because it has flaky software. Four hours fixing a security issue. months trying to figure out why my LAN connection stops working. Random shit that just shows up and wastes my time.
Given how complicated one of these robots would have to be, how often would they need to have some sort of adjustment, reboot or tuneup?
Thanks, but no. Not until they are as reliable as a dishwasher or my car.
Also, I’m on Team Legs. Tracks would probably destroy my floors. And imagine having to clean them.
This sounds like exactly the kind of thing James Cameron would do. He’d also be the only one with the singular focus, fascination for new technologies and access to the huge amounts of money needed to pull it off.
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there is a subtitle track.
My modest proposal for a new Law of Robotics, perhaps inserted before Asimov’s 1st Law:
“All robots, AIs, LLMs, and such must have a large, easily accessible to humans but inaccessible to robots, fail-safe E-STOP button that when pressed will remove all motive energy from the robot.”
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Hopefully they start with the self-driving cars.
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Just buy a robot specialized in cleaning robot treads. Like with Fuller Brush… there’s an infinite series of brushes that clean other brushes.
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