From Android to AI: Google’s bot plot revealed

Have you heard? Google — the company invading your privacy to better serve ads to you and mind-boggling profits to itself — is partnering with Foxconn, a company employing a million workers it doesn’t want. This unholy union will not only birth all kinds of new and definitely malevolent robots, it’s also conveniently funded by the U.S. military. Conspiracy theorists must be frothing in fits of self-righteous glee, sweating beneath tinfoil hats, endlessly exhorting “I told you so,” and retreating further into the bunkers they built across our fruited plains.

But maybe they aren’t so far off. This is the perfect storm of technology-worshipping billionaires in bed with Orwellian-minded government security officials, both allied with foreign industrial powers developing experimental technology to replace us. The establishment might finally be showing its hand.

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Right now we’re unconcerned because robots will only supplant a million poor Taiwanese workers with whom we don’t connect in any way until we touch anything vaguely electronic. But that will change when this technology crosses the ocean and lands on your job.

Some of the spookiest examples come from Boston Dynamics, which Google acquired last year at the tail end of its bot-buying binge. As survivalist rhetoric tells us, BD is a government front building an army of robot models, each with a different military focus.

Meet the LS3

Among BD’s offerings, the LS3 is the most talked-about model because it’s being field tested with the Marines in their search for a few good robots. This bot has four legs and can climb over rough terrain behind a squad of Marines carrying their important nonweapon gear, probably at a cost of a mere $20 million per robot, which has to be cheaper than draping Kevlar over a live mule. The LS3 is also superior to biology in that an actual donkey might announce our troops’ positions with loud braying when the bullets start flying.

Bots are definitely safer in those conditions because, like most robots, the LS3 is brainlessly following, step for ominous step, a signal transponder mounted in one of the Marines’ backpacks — no braying, no pesky self-preservation instinct. The worst that might happen is the bot-pack is accidentally left on the deployment helicopter and the mecha-mule blindly chases it all the way back to base, flattening local villages and pre-schools as it goes.

However, the Marines are hoping that Boston Dynamics finds a way to affix a machine gun turret on the LS3, which lends wonderful additional blood-letting potential to the scenario. Keep in mind there’s probably only a 50 percent chance of that happening, given the stellar reputation of early-stage military technology in the field.

I’m all for robots that make life easier and safer on the young men and women we’re continuously sending into hot zones to protect our fossil fuel supply. But if I’m a militia member awaiting the fascist Big Brother takeover somewhere in the lonesome wilds, I’m a little daunted at the concept of defending my 10-year supply of Dinty Moore Beef Stew against a battalion of four- to six-legged, crawling, and entirely bulletproof battlebots, as I clutch to the modified, 50-round Armalite I originally bought as a hunting rifle. Little do those forest-dwelling rebels realize that Marine-protecting, survivalist-crushing logistics-cum-battle robots aren’t all Google has in its arsenal.

Google’s robot family tree

In all, Google acquired eight robotics companies last year, and the technologies those companies represent differ widely. There’s Redwood Robotics, which manufactures mainly arms; Japanese Schaft, which build high-efficiency servos and arms; Industrial Perception, which does 3D vision-controlled robotics; Bot & Dolly that combines advanced motion control with robotics; Holomni that builds omnidirectional vehicle tech; Autofuss to add visual artistry to the engineering process; and Meka, a company working on designing friendly-looking robot faces for more positive human interaction so that we’ll stay calm and happy when we’re herded into the matrix.

Combining all these technologies into an advanced line of Googlebots is now the job of Andy Rubin, who has been given control of a Google-owned company with the mysteriously inapplicable name Moonshot. Rubin soared to fame when he spearheaded development of Google’s Android mobile OS, which is the kind of foreshadowing that should have warned us.

For now, Google is claiming its robot hordes will only be aimed at putting factory laborers out of work, specifically in foreign countries for whom Americans have no empathy. But rumors indicate and are potentially born out when you consider Google’s acquisition portfolio that the company is looking at autonomous cars (aka land drones — so long, Uber) and airborne delivery drones à la the Bezos Dream.

Termites shall lead the way

Those are the technologies Google has snapped up to date. A lot more bot technology is out there waiting to become Google M&A meals. For one, there’s the semi-mythical love robot that chases hapless female scientists. More realistically, some foresight-lacking engineers at Harvard recently built termite-based bots that can organize without human intervention and build complex structures, including mobilized automatic weapons and robot-controlled prison camps. Watching them is like seeing an electronic version of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony — a real-life illustration of control and organization only a hive mind can match.

Google may not need Harvard’s self-leading termite bots — it recently purchased an artificial intelligence company with a foreboding name: DeepMind. Coincidentally, it’s also the perfect title for the eventual robot superbrain emperor that Will Smith, Keanu Reeves, or maybe Tom Selleck will need to vanquish, so we can throw off the robot bio-battery yoke and take back our lives and our refrigerators. DeepMind has probably already seized control of Larry and Sergey, so any day now you can expect a knock on the door from a smiling Android with a Google logo on its forehead asking politely that you please get in the tear-stained truck, pay no mind to the whimpering therein.

All eyes on Amazon

Given Google’s totally unnecessary military funding (it already shares most of the world’s money supply with Apple and Microsoft), I’m reconsidering my anti-Amazon drone position. Jeff Bezos may be the only rebel-bot building force on our doomed earth that will be able to fight on the Idaho militia’s side when the brown stuff eventually hits the spinning propellers. Unfortunately, if he doesn’t switch development goals, all Amazon will be able to do is deliver defective Blu-ray disks to enemy soldiers.

I realize now that we’re not long for this world. Biology is obsolete. Servos are the arms of the future, and we’re on our way out. The giant layoff of the human condition is looming, so we better enjoy the time we have left. For my part, I’m going take a walk through Central Park and watch the children play, the junkies sleep, or maybe the rollerbladers crash, then get some street meat at a sidewalk cart and breathe in the free air, maybe buy some tinfoil — you know, celebrate life at its fullest.