Darpa has advanced so much.

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Late to the comment party here, but Slashdot had an interesting explanation of *why* so many of the robots had trouble like this:
"DARPA deliberately degraded communications (low bandwidth, high latency, intermittent connection) during the challenge to truly see how a human-robot team could collaborate in a Fukushima-type disaster. And there was no standard set for how a human-robot interface would work. So, some worked better than others. The winning DRC-Hubo robot used custom software designed by Team KAIST that was engineered to perform in an environment with low bandwidth. It also used the Xenomai real-time operating system for Linux and a customized motion control framework. The second-place finisher, Team IHMC, used a sliding scale of autonomy that allowed a human operator to take control when the robot seemed stumped or if the robot knew it would run into problems."

http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/15/06/10/038224/why-so-many-robots-struggled-with-the-darpa-challenge

DARPA Robotics Challenge
https://youtu.be/8v18eAtRiCI

GO DARPA! DEFEND US. KILL US. Just do it quickly, I don't like suffering. Unless you want humanity to suffer, then ok. Fine. Needles make me faint, so avoid them if you want me consciously mauled alive, able to articulate every millionth of a second of pain.

Perhaps post-machine-apocalypse, post-horrendous-suffering-of-man, we will find peace. But what will we be? What will anything be when robot cheetahs roam free?

You don't want your DARPA funded spy bots getting into the wrong hands.

Absolutely. It's a mistake to make assumptions about what AI will be like. The doomsayers too often attribute human qualities to it. It's like speculating about alien intelligence. It will come in bits an pieces as we understand it more. My own guess is that, not weighed down by long obsolete genetic imperatives and human psychological pathologies, it will most likely be (in its higher form) an extraordinarily capable problem solver and prognosticator. It will lack the human flaws that typically motivate the killer AIs of science fiction. Of course, it will probably have it's own unique flaws. I do think it's wise to be wary of software that has developed beyond our capability to understand it (much as we don't understand the workings of our own consciousness).

Probably my primary concern about robotic weapons comes from a DARPA proposal I read about some time in the past. What they wanted was an autonomous, bird sized UAV. It would contain surveillance equipment and sensors, and be able to share the data it collects through a mesh network established with it's fellows and the commanders as well as receive orders. It would be intelligent enough to find a suitable strategic vantage point and hide itself. From there it would simply observe. With a large enough swarm of these, perhaps many thousands, you could send them into a city at night. They would each also potentially carry a small warhead allowing them to launch themselves at and destroy threats. Once these robots were entrenched, which might only take an hour or two, whoever controls them would effectively rule the city. Even if they were cut off from their command structure, they might still retain enough intelligence to recognize a particular individual, someone in a forbidden area, someone holding a weapon, or someone not brodcasting the right IFF signal, or any number of things. There might be no defense against such a thing (though there probably will be).

To me, that concept is terrifying. It's not huge hulking terminator-like war machines that could be the greatest threat, just flying, self-guiding, intelligent hand grenades. All someone would need is the capability to manufacture them. No raising an army, no speeches or threats, just a factory and a design. It's also not too far fetched to believe this capability might be available in just a matter of a few decades. They'll be easier to build than nuclear weapons, and oh so convenient and easy to deploy.

Um.... anyways, I dunno where I was going with that. Just lots of random pontificating, but because it's technology, it's silly to try to stop it with legislation. It will happen, as ChaosEngine rightly points out, the best course of action is to be on top of it and to understand it.

100 lbs to LEO for $1M: that's $10k/lb. Cheaper than the space shuttle, but a fair bit more than what the private launch folks (will eventually) launch for. Also the video doesn't show de-orbit or passivization of the 2nd stage, meaning this is a potential source of a lot of new space junk. Furthermore, since this is Darpa/military, it strikes me as a cover story for further weaponization of space.

If it's being backed by DARPA, you know it's 4 Laws Safe!

1- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2- A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3- A robot may not injure its own kind and defend its own kind unless it is interfering with the first or second rule.
4- [CLASSIFIED]

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Are you two talking about the version that DARPA employee's kids have had since April on their smartphones??

Ok, this is totally bad-ass....

Aaaaaand if I wanna play with it I need about $749 USD....

Uhhh, when are these DARPA toys gonna be as cheap as the quality of life in the United States?!

Up-Voted because PP does not do Facebook. If anyone here does still do Tracespook, they should dump their useless, deleterious activity immediately from the infamous (track, control, and programming arm of DARPA) website that , "YOU MAY NEVER BECOME A NON-MEMBER OF."

Facebook: A dangerous piece of shit, the terminal internet cancer.