Will Google Produce the First Real Humanoid Robot?

[33cl33]

With Google inventing and finessing conversational search (making software that not only recognizes speech, but can follow human's clunky logic from sentence to sentence) essentially working to create the Star Trek computer that you can just ask anything of...

...and their efforts to properly categorize and contextualize all of human knowledge...

...and the obvious name for their android operating system...

...and their nearly limitless R&D budgets...

I've often wondered if they might have humanoid robots in their sites for future product development.

Well - it appears they do: http://www.businessinsider.com/google-j ... cs-2013-12

The interesting line in the article is this:

Google is not saying how much money it paid for Boston Dynamics, and said that it does not plan to release financial information on any of the other eight robotics companies it has purchased in the last 6 months.

[33cl33]

Also http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/techn ... .html?_r=0

[dale coba]

Will Google produce the first real sexualized/sexualizable humanoid robot?

[xodar]

Will Google produce the first real sexualized/sexualizable humanoid robot?

That's the real question.

[dale coba]

Historically, the very first innovator for big projects spends much effort, but others may take advantage of the ground-breaking work. Perhaps the competition will look like the mp3 player, cell phone & tablet battles of the 2000s? or perhaps Google has the patents to stay ahead, ones which fundamentally matter; and the finances to see them through a slow adoption or successful competition.

I think we've seen the primary motivators behind so much progress comes from the military, or industry looking to hire fewer employees. Is there the sure money behind humanoid bots that can socially pass for human? Is there a Hugh Hefner, or a Bob Guccionne figure behind the sexualizing breakthrough. Maybe it's all after-market, warranty-voiding modifications that bring into being this first model-that-passes-for-human? Once society accepts the existence, Google can unveil that they've had a better model, factory sexualized, just waiting to swoop back and crush the market share of the first public innovator.

Google's so big, I wonder if any precedent even exists in home electronics. Maybe Google just builds and starts selling its own (properly licensed) Buffybot, Lucy Liu-bot, or Marilyn Monrobot, with any fear of backlash by Fundamentalists, moralists, and other objectioneers.

- Dale Coba

[xodar]

Will they be called googolians? Googolettes?

[33cl33]

They're certainly positioning themselves better for it than any other tech giant. Now that they acquired Nest, I can easily see the housekeeper / assistant / caretaker android that's wirelessly interconnected with all of your other household gadgets (and can warm up your Tesla with a thought just by knowing when you need to head to work).

[Doctor345]

But if it is a Google robot, beware: it will probably report everything that it sees you do back to Google just so that they can bombard you with even more targeted ads. Their search engine and new specs both do this, so why would their robots be any different?

[dale coba]

Or: will security fail, and the robot becomes hackable?

Microsoft never rebuilt their crappy, low security OS, and Target is the largest of several stores forced to admit tens of millions of customers had their info hacked in December.

All our identities will have been stolen by the time Google wants to sell us robots and spy on us!

- Dale Coba

[33cl33]

That ship sailed, long ago. If you're genuinely afraid of what commercial entities can / will do with your information - pull the plug and go live in an off-the-grid, self-sustainable cabin. Some folks have built ones that are quite nice and low cost to get up and running!

Personally, I'm happy to trade targeted ads for productivity tools that actually work. And adblock works wonders for cleaning up the browsing experience.

[Doctor345]

Fine, good for you, I'm more than happy to use the productivity tools generated on the back of your personal data! Add blockers work wonders, though!

[33cl33]

Well, this has been fun.