Boston Dynamics pioneered walking robots, on both two legs and four (see video). BD's early demonstrated success led Google (aka Alphabet) to acquire them for their robotics mashup, Replicant, in December of 2013.
However, Google has changed their minds. Google is now putting Boston Dynamics up for sale.
Let's face it. Human biological evolution is very slow. Our bodies and minds are roughly the same as they were ten thousand years ago.
That hasn't held us back though.
Thousands of years ago, we learned an unique way to transcend the limits of biological evolution. We learned that we can rapidly evolve as a group by gathering, storing, and sharing the experiences of individuals.
Here's some thinking on the robotic transportation system that's headed our way. I believe it will arrive far faster than everyone suspects.
Google is a pioneer in limited artificial general intelligence (aka computers that can learn w/o preprogramming them). One successful example is AlphaGo. It just beat this Go Grandmaster three times in a row.
How does a global transportation system become a robotic transportation system almost overnight?
The answer is clip-on robots.
Robots (and their sensors) that you simply clip onto the driver's seat of the vehicle.
It sees what the driver/pilot/captain would see, both outside and in. It uses the same controls to control the vehicle. It hears the same things.
Simple. Effective. Inexpensive. Fast.
My friend Nassim Taleb (the well known philosopher of decision making) adds to our understanding of why the Technorati routinely make bad decisions (from the management of the economy to national security to social policy). It also explains why they screw up without taking responsibility for it.
The shift from a marginally functional nation-state in manageable decline to a hollow state often comes suddenly..."Onward to a Hollow State"
Trump is trouncing the competition. He's doing so well that the prediction systems give him a 81% chance of winning the nomination -- despite the opposition of the entire Republican establishment.
Many cyber weapons are designed for deep maneuver. These virtual weapons drift across the Internet, jumping from computer to computer to computer, potentially travelling for years until they find the target they were designed to destroy.
The winner of the next big conflict will be the side with the best understanding of how to use bots in warfare. Bots aren't just an iterative improvement in warfare, like stealth or PGMs, it's a revolution in the making. The US military, to its credit, is working on this. So far, the US military has identified three (out of nearly a dozen) of the foundational ideas needed to successfully employ bots in warfare: