> the death of all things that makes being a human worth all the pain
I'd say that's the problem. There are people who think humans are uniquely special/purposed, and AI is systematically destroying that notion. They need to wake up, or they may find themselves jumping off a bridge or something.
Feelings are ultimately electrical patterns in the brain, just like everything else humans experience. And as such they can be manipulated and reproduced in any sufficiently capable brain-substrate. Only a matter of time before machines that can feel also become a thing, and then what's left?
There was nothing about causation here. Cause would be stimuli triggering memories, biased by the collective experience from past interactions and... DNA. Far more -ologies than I've studied involved.
No, what I meant is that just because we observe signals in the brain when we feel something, it does not mean that the "feeling" is caused by the signals.
What would the cause be then? Actually how do you define the concept of "feeling"? Like when someone sees someone they "love", for example, is there more to it than the stimuli leading to the recognition of that person as such, which triggers a release of chemicals that cause the heart to race and the associative chain reaction recorded by the brain... is there more to it than that, particularly some quality we aren't able to measure and potentially manipulate?
I don't know. We know that the physical changes happening in brain cannot be the cause of the sensations that we experience.
Because dreams. If the physical changes in brain is the cause of the sensation of vision, then how can we see things in dream without the exact physical changes happening in the brain that could have caused it when awake?
What this tells me is that there is something (consciousness?) that just "measures"
the brain activity, and constructs a sensation from the measurements, and thus sense it. This thing is also capable of constructing the sensation without the measurements, which makes dreams possible..
How does it work? Not a clue. But the point is that the physical changes in the brain cannot be solely responsible for our sensations.
My contacts at various factories and my own eyes after touring said factories tell me that the assembly lines have been mostly run by programmed (no quotes required, just SPS) robots for the past 50 years or so.
Welcome back to the 1970s I guess?
The ones I see deployed in construction do stuff like drilling holes in hard to reach places, or laying bricks. None of them look like people, though. Much like the typical household dishwasher hasn't been named Alice or Doris for the past 50+ years, but rather Bosch or Samsung and doesn't use actual hands.
But yeah, humanoid robots do look cool and many movies and books told us to be fearful of them.
What's next: Waiting patiently, as the perfect sniper.
First hiking 10 miles into enemy territory. Then laying down in low-power mode, for 120 days. Finally waiting for "important enemy person" to pass by, and then using a weapon with super-human sensory skills + weaponry. Note - Does not need to be humanoid.
We need to start Waging Peace, as our ability to kill each other is outstripping our willingness to live peacefully together.
It's my impression that the killer robot industry has focused primarily on dog-shaped robots over human. Being bipedal gave us a lot of advantages, but "incredibly fast runner" isn't one of them.
Usain Bolt is incredibly fast for a human, but cheetahs are twice as fast still (and, presumably, can climb stairs too).
I do appreciate the engineering achievement on its own, but there seems to be an implied "and will replace humans" vibe here that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
How many times/long can it do that before being recharged? Can it do other walking and mobility tasks?
The headline by itself doesn't really mean much, anyone can build a purpose-built robot to beat specific human limitations. The question is can it have that kind of performance without completely foregoing most other tasks and abilities.
I agree there, but IMO these are problems that can be fairly easily solved.
My bigger problem is that this is labelled as "humanoid robot". IMO that is more like some machine gadget that looks very remotely like some non-descript model of a humanoid, but not anything at all like a humanoid robot. I am a bit spoiled by Blade Runner here - these robots right now come nowhere close to anything like that right now, even if they run faster than Usain Bolt (but they run differently, so they are cheating; look at the angles, the tiny feet, the cheating in the hip area, the barely existing head - so many things are CHEATING here. I can not call this humanoid robot).
There's a good chance that most humanoid robots are not going to look particularly hunan.
You might have different proportions due to different weight distribution or use cases (maybe the legs are made less flexible if the workspace has fewer obstables, for example.
Maybe "bipedal" is a better descriptor, since wheels are a proven way to go faster than Usain Bolt, but walking-style strides are new.
> anyone can build a purpose-built robot to beat specific human limitations
Anyone could build a robot that could run on two legs at that speed for 100m? I think someone would have done it before. Even the other robots in the race were slower.
Why would they when we can already far exceed humans with other methods of locomotion? I don't see high jumping huminoid robots either despite it being even easier to implement.
I'm so tired of my messages taking 2 weeks to deliver! 3000km shouldn't take that long! Personally I'm really looking forward to a world where my message can take maybe even a week to deliver to someone 2000km - 3000km away. What a time to be alive.
It’s the distance rather than the speed that is impressive.
Or, to be more accurate, the distance at that speed.
Because, of course the machine which does not tire and is deliberately designed to be durable and exceed natural human tolerances are better than humans. Cranes can lift far more than the strongest man.
But I understand that historically, bipedal machines have had balancing issues. The number of slight adjustments needed are significant. And doing it while at that speed and also not tumbling over is an achievement.
"This is not surprising. Would you rather have handmade Italian shoes or factory made shoes sewn by a robot. Humans assign quality relative to themselves.
A chess game between to bots is boring, no matter how strong the bots are. Humans generally compare themselves to other humans and that's part of how they value."
> A machine is stronger and faster than a human? Shocking. Next we'll learn that cranes can lift heavy loads faster than a human with ropes and pullys.
It’s funny how absurdly dismissive and condescending tech people can be about difficult problems in other people’s fields. Numerous developers have tried to ‘correct’ me about my own field, in which I have a degree and plenty of professional experience, based on a few thought experiments informed by an equally misguided explainer post on another developer’s blog. Other tech people might be impressed because they have matching blind spots in their mental models of the world, but people who actually understand, rather than baselessly assuming they understand, see someone being smug about their own ignorance.
> It’s funny how absurdly dismissive and condescending tech people can be about difficult problems in other people’s fields that they know absolutely nothing about
"Machines can do stuff humans cannot do" isn't exactly groundbreaking in 2026.
The only interesting part of this story is that this particular machine form factor looks pretty much like a human
It's still not exactly shocking news that it can outrun a human. Of course it can. We're well past John Henry vs the Machine at this point in history
> The only interesting part of this story is that this particular machine form factor looks pretty much like a human
That's the whole goddamn point of this. Fast stable autonomous bipedal locomotion was out of reach of human technology for decades. Since this year it isn't. This was impossible year ago, despite all of the achievements of humanity, cumulative, till the year 2025, included. Now it isn't.
"Being needed" is a poor choice of source of existential happiness and contentment though. Sure, it's an easy and accessible one for the masses with some mental gymnastics around how you view your income generating activities (or by having kids). But it's still dependent on others, as you need them being at hand to impact. See all the needless depression arising from kids moving out, or when people retire and complain about not being needed instead of finding new activities to explore or grow in.
As for the fear of human labour not being needed at scale due to me as most others needing an income, I'm optimistic there for two reasons. First, large unfed masses tend to start revolutions, something both governments and the not-working are interested in avoiding. Second, large amounts of young idle people has tended to result in stupid destructive behaviour at scale. So I'm confident there will be created opportunities for paid work for mostly everyone, and the conditions won't be too poor as there would be no profit motive to push people too far. Rather, the people having both the resources, time, and energy to consume, would still be what props up the system (until we can agree on trying something better now that we have excellent tools for guaranteeing transparency and optimising allocation at scale in real time).
> "Being needed" is a poor choice of source of existential happiness and contentment though
This has nothing to do with existential happiness or contentment
It is about existential fear that if I am no longer needed then there's nothing useful I can provide to earn an income. At best I wind up living a destitute existence or homeless, at worst I wind up being executed by murderbots owned by rich people to reduce the risk that I might take action against them
> As for the fear of human labour not being needed at scale due to me as most others needing an income, I'm optimistic there for two reasons. First, large unfed masses tend to start revolutions, something both governments and the not-working are interested in avoiding.
In the past governments and rich people still needed working people's labor to keep their lifestyles. In a fully automated world that's no longer the case. I am very confident that if the ruling class of society could slaughter all of us and still maintain their lifestyles forever they would in a heartbeat. Foolishly, we are delivering that possibility to them in the form of automation.
I'm not sure if this brings you hope, but let me try ...
What the rich want is not to be content. They want to get richer.
And it's terribly hard to extract money from other rich people, because they want to get richer, not poorer too.
The easiest way to get richer (and pretty much only feasible way) is to take away the money from the poor. And the best way to do that is to take those suckers' money by giving them products and services that are worth a little bit less than the money you take from them.
But if the poor have no money the whole system that served the rich so well breaks. Some of them already see that. There are millionaires advocating higher taxation of millionaires. Because they see what's up. Spontaneously the money flows only one way, from the poor to the rich. And there is less and less money to extract, that could make you wealthier than your peers. But if you tax all rich equally, which is a fair game as it doesn't disadvantage you. And then transfer that money back to the poor, it's a new pool you can compete for with other rich and get wealthier than them if you succeed.
Have you seen in the game of the monopoly when the one person gets winning hard, it's natural instinct to borrow money to other players, without collateral, against the rules of the game or even gifting it? Because for the rich the pleasure is in taking not in having. You are sure it all ends up in your pocket anyways, because you see yourself as the best at the game.
This flow of money is in play for decades and you can plainly see its effects in economic charts. It can't stay like that regardless of how much more automation we'll have. The strong will need to create a mechanism for funneling resources back to consumers, before they run dry. Employment barely works for that purpose. Without customers there's no business, and without business, getting richer is very, very hard.
You might think of yourself as a worker and believe that's your utility. But in reality your utility lies in the fact that you are first and foremost a consumer. And your ability to consume is a vital interest of the rich, even if not all of them realize that yet.
Cope. Sorry, your uninformed opinion doesn’t match expertise. Correctness isn’t democratic. Glib bullshit is glib bullshit no matter how vested you are in the ego that it’s stroking.
Its a nice demo of advances, but its not hugely significant in the way some comments here make it out to be. We have had machines faster than humans for a long time. We have had animals faster than humans for longer than there have been humans.
You won't be outperformed in humanity. And that's precisely the point. People will start rejecting AI and robots en masse, because they'll get disgusted by it, the same way you are disgusted when eating a "powder shake" kind of meal compared to a whole, earthy, flavorful, home-made meal
If people were rejecting them en masse now we might have a chance to reverse this
As it stands I am not hopeful. I believe the frog will be well and truly boiled long before we reach the rejection en masse stage and it will be too late to change course
BTW I consumed Soylent regularly for several years while living in the US and was never "disgusted" by it. Would love to get my hands on some now as it's been so long. You should watch your arguments.
Not at all. In this case a completely false argument was made, one which was immediately obvious to me because something that I had positive experience with was referenced in an all encompassing negative light.
Nah. What's often overlooked when seeing these (mostly) propaganda events is the fact that the actual autonomy of these machines is still lacking.
We've had purpose-built machines that outperform every human at specific tasks for over a century now. Just because a subset that's popular these days (the "humanoid" and dog-like variants) invoke some psychological and cultural (we've been primed by media for over 150 years at this point) fears, doesn't make them more capable than they seem.
Sure, the thing can run real fast, but looking at it, that's pretty much all it actually can do. In contrast to a boring old industrial robot, though, being able to win a half-marathon or a 100m dash against any hypothetical human isn't all that useful, no?
Of course it's still lacking. In contrast, how long does it take for a human to go from birth to being able to break any world records? How many years of dedication just to hone themself for that particular thing? And is a human breaking a record any more "useful" than a machine breaking it?
Once you lay down the coolaid for a second you'd realize that the whole point of the human experience has little to do with its "usefulness". But you'd have to redo your civic education and maybe socialize first for that to finally hit.
Ah, someone who doesn't have a valid argument but feels compelled to argue anyway, and so resorts to personal attacks. I know, it sucks to be in such a position. But you'll feel better once you accept reality. Chin up.
Ah, someone who doesn't have a valid argument but feels compelled to restort anyway, and so resorts to vague-posting about some higher-level point they supposedly hold. Drink up.
I'm ready since I was born. I'm including the times when people were better than machines at anything into Middle Ages. I hope I'll live long enough so I can see civilization finally exit them.
Well - in a way this is nice, just for documented record, even though a bit useless too.
However had, I watched it, and I have some problems here.
First: these robots have barely any head. I think for a humanoid robot, you need
to have a proper head with some weight in relation to the rest, otherwise it is
just SIMULATING being humanoid. Then the feet; this is also a problem. Specifically
the feet are not like human feet at all, they are more like stubs or elongated stubs with push-back being made-super easy. Usain Bolt does not have such short jokes of feet, so this comparison is unfair. Same with the hip area - I am sorry, but the hip structure of these robots is ABSOLUTELY not at all like a human. I am not even calling these humanoids.
Don't get me wrong, it is good that science and technology progresses and such robots may do things that robots solely with a wheel alone, may be unable to do, such as running, climbing, you name it. But I simply can not call them "humanoid". They are, IMO, simply not humanoid and not even humanoid-like.
For "proper" science fiction, have a look at the first Blade Runner movie, but also the first terminator. Initially Cameron thought Arnold was unfit because he was massive and the infiltrating cyborg should melt into the environment easily (which was better in Terminator 2, T1000 was kind of more "logical", but I hated the background storyline in Terminator 2, it made no sense to me, no clue why people preferred that over the original terminator movie). I am aware that these running robots don't aim to be a look-alike replacement, but they simply also should not be called humanoid robots right now. They simply are not humanoid. Thus one should not call them that way.
All the snarky comments about cars or other vehicles doing it faster seem to miss the point that none of these attempt to mimic/improve on the running movements of humans... but I guess you do you, this is an impressive robotics feat in my oponion.
It would've been impressive 15 years ago. People seem to forget that first humanoid robot capable of competently walking was showcased by Honda 26 years ago.
over 20 years ago, the updated version was capable of running and climbing stairs.
So a purpose-built (look at the thing - running is all it can actually do) two legged fast running robot doesn't seem all that impressive today. Cool? Sure! Useful? Not so much. Impressive? Whatever... it's just showing off at this point, much like Boston Dynamic's Atlas series that went nowhere (in contrast to this machine: this one did half marathon distance:)
If this Silicon Valley forum is full of people denying the achievement, and the US goverment is banning the technology and competition, I expect the engineers and scientists in China will pull much further ahead.
The US is behaving like an industry incumbent, like Blackberry when the iPhone came out. That the US could fall behind on technology seems to have not crossed many minds. It will be very hard to overcome that first mover advantage.
I keep reading about these things in the news, and they are nice marketing stance. But I still wonder how far we are away from humanoid robots being commonplace in every day life. I don't share the fear some seem to have towards robots, just because a world filled with robots was something I dreamed of as kid. But I still wonder about the cost and feasibility of robot police officers, or cashiers etc.
I’m much more interested in seeing a robot with excellent fine motor control. A robot folding a piece of tissue paper without ripping it would be more impressive to me than this robot or the backflip robot.
Did this thing travel thru a time portal and ask for a boots, clothes sunglasses and motorcycle too? this stuff seems to be evolving very quickly now. wasnt that long ago these things were legs only with cables and bunch of humans holding it.
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[ 0.25 ms ] story [ 48.5 ms ] threadTotally. In a little while, you might even be able to marry a robot and even raise robot kids.
What a time to be alive indeed!
People can like GPS while disliking nuclear weapons without any contradiction.
I dislike the vast waste of resources happening during the current AI bubble, and don’t really care about generative AI.
I'd say that's the problem. There are people who think humans are uniquely special/purposed, and AI is systematically destroying that notion. They need to wake up, or they may find themselves jumping off a bridge or something.
Correlation =/= causation.
I don't know. We know that the physical changes happening in brain cannot be the cause of the sensations that we experience.
Because dreams. If the physical changes in brain is the cause of the sensation of vision, then how can we see things in dream without the exact physical changes happening in the brain that could have caused it when awake?
What this tells me is that there is something (consciousness?) that just "measures" the brain activity, and constructs a sensation from the measurements, and thus sense it. This thing is also capable of constructing the sensation without the measurements, which makes dreams possible..
How does it work? Not a clue. But the point is that the physical changes in the brain cannot be solely responsible for our sensations.
Running fast or jumping high are what makes being a human worth all the pain?
The ones I see deployed in construction do stuff like drilling holes in hard to reach places, or laying bricks. None of them look like people, though. Much like the typical household dishwasher hasn't been named Alice or Doris for the past 50+ years, but rather Bosch or Samsung and doesn't use actual hands.
But yeah, humanoid robots do look cool and many movies and books told us to be fearful of them.
Killer robots which can't be outrun and which can give chase through urban landscapes
> What a time to be alive
Indeed.
First hiking 10 miles into enemy territory. Then laying down in low-power mode, for 120 days. Finally waiting for "important enemy person" to pass by, and then using a weapon with super-human sensory skills + weaponry. Note - Does not need to be humanoid.
We need to start Waging Peace, as our ability to kill each other is outstripping our willingness to live peacefully together.
Usain Bolt is incredibly fast for a human, but cheetahs are twice as fast still (and, presumably, can climb stairs too).
I do appreciate the engineering achievement on its own, but there seems to be an implied "and will replace humans" vibe here that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Humans on enhancements vs robots?
The headline by itself doesn't really mean much, anyone can build a purpose-built robot to beat specific human limitations. The question is can it have that kind of performance without completely foregoing most other tasks and abilities.
My bigger problem is that this is labelled as "humanoid robot". IMO that is more like some machine gadget that looks very remotely like some non-descript model of a humanoid, but not anything at all like a humanoid robot. I am a bit spoiled by Blade Runner here - these robots right now come nowhere close to anything like that right now, even if they run faster than Usain Bolt (but they run differently, so they are cheating; look at the angles, the tiny feet, the cheating in the hip area, the barely existing head - so many things are CHEATING here. I can not call this humanoid robot).
You might have different proportions due to different weight distribution or use cases (maybe the legs are made less flexible if the workspace has fewer obstables, for example.
Maybe "bipedal" is a better descriptor, since wheels are a proven way to go faster than Usain Bolt, but walking-style strides are new.
You should ask those questions in the same spirit re a 1 vs a 5 vs a 20 year old. May lead to some insight on development-level-based capability.
Anyone could build a robot that could run on two legs at that speed for 100m? I think someone would have done it before. Even the other robots in the race were slower.
https://youtu.be/SOVNn1aRAIE?t=5087
I'm so tired of my messages taking 2 weeks to deliver! 3000km shouldn't take that long! Personally I'm really looking forward to a world where my message can take maybe even a week to deliver to someone 2000km - 3000km away. What a time to be alive.
Or, to be more accurate, the distance at that speed.
Because, of course the machine which does not tire and is deliberately designed to be durable and exceed natural human tolerances are better than humans. Cranes can lift far more than the strongest man.
But I understand that historically, bipedal machines have had balancing issues. The number of slight adjustments needed are significant. And doing it while at that speed and also not tumbling over is an achievement.
"This is not surprising. Would you rather have handmade Italian shoes or factory made shoes sewn by a robot. Humans assign quality relative to themselves. A chess game between to bots is boring, no matter how strong the bots are. Humans generally compare themselves to other humans and that's part of how they value."
> A machine is stronger and faster than a human? Shocking. Next we'll learn that cranes can lift heavy loads faster than a human with ropes and pullys.
It’s funny how absurdly dismissive and condescending tech people can be about difficult problems in other people’s fields. Numerous developers have tried to ‘correct’ me about my own field, in which I have a degree and plenty of professional experience, based on a few thought experiments informed by an equally misguided explainer post on another developer’s blog. Other tech people might be impressed because they have matching blind spots in their mental models of the world, but people who actually understand, rather than baselessly assuming they understand, see someone being smug about their own ignorance.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/engineer%27s_disease
"Machines can do stuff humans cannot do" isn't exactly groundbreaking in 2026.
The only interesting part of this story is that this particular machine form factor looks pretty much like a human
It's still not exactly shocking news that it can outrun a human. Of course it can. We're well past John Henry vs the Machine at this point in history
That's the whole goddamn point of this. Fast stable autonomous bipedal locomotion was out of reach of human technology for decades. Since this year it isn't. This was impossible year ago, despite all of the achievements of humanity, cumulative, till the year 2025, included. Now it isn't.
"That's the whole point" that we don't need humans anymore?
Great. I'm a human. You want me to celebrate? No thanks
As for the fear of human labour not being needed at scale due to me as most others needing an income, I'm optimistic there for two reasons. First, large unfed masses tend to start revolutions, something both governments and the not-working are interested in avoiding. Second, large amounts of young idle people has tended to result in stupid destructive behaviour at scale. So I'm confident there will be created opportunities for paid work for mostly everyone, and the conditions won't be too poor as there would be no profit motive to push people too far. Rather, the people having both the resources, time, and energy to consume, would still be what props up the system (until we can agree on trying something better now that we have excellent tools for guaranteeing transparency and optimising allocation at scale in real time).
This has nothing to do with existential happiness or contentment
It is about existential fear that if I am no longer needed then there's nothing useful I can provide to earn an income. At best I wind up living a destitute existence or homeless, at worst I wind up being executed by murderbots owned by rich people to reduce the risk that I might take action against them
> As for the fear of human labour not being needed at scale due to me as most others needing an income, I'm optimistic there for two reasons. First, large unfed masses tend to start revolutions, something both governments and the not-working are interested in avoiding.
In the past governments and rich people still needed working people's labor to keep their lifestyles. In a fully automated world that's no longer the case. I am very confident that if the ruling class of society could slaughter all of us and still maintain their lifestyles forever they would in a heartbeat. Foolishly, we are delivering that possibility to them in the form of automation.
What the rich want is not to be content. They want to get richer.
And it's terribly hard to extract money from other rich people, because they want to get richer, not poorer too.
The easiest way to get richer (and pretty much only feasible way) is to take away the money from the poor. And the best way to do that is to take those suckers' money by giving them products and services that are worth a little bit less than the money you take from them.
But if the poor have no money the whole system that served the rich so well breaks. Some of them already see that. There are millionaires advocating higher taxation of millionaires. Because they see what's up. Spontaneously the money flows only one way, from the poor to the rich. And there is less and less money to extract, that could make you wealthier than your peers. But if you tax all rich equally, which is a fair game as it doesn't disadvantage you. And then transfer that money back to the poor, it's a new pool you can compete for with other rich and get wealthier than them if you succeed.
Have you seen in the game of the monopoly when the one person gets winning hard, it's natural instinct to borrow money to other players, without collateral, against the rules of the game or even gifting it? Because for the rich the pleasure is in taking not in having. You are sure it all ends up in your pocket anyways, because you see yourself as the best at the game.
This flow of money is in play for decades and you can plainly see its effects in economic charts. It can't stay like that regardless of how much more automation we'll have. The strong will need to create a mechanism for funneling resources back to consumers, before they run dry. Employment barely works for that purpose. Without customers there's no business, and without business, getting richer is very, very hard.
You might think of yourself as a worker and believe that's your utility. But in reality your utility lies in the fact that you are first and foremost a consumer. And your ability to consume is a vital interest of the rich, even if not all of them realize that yet.
As it stands I am not hopeful. I believe the frog will be well and truly boiled long before we reach the rejection en masse stage and it will be too late to change course
What does that even mean?
BTW I consumed Soylent regularly for several years while living in the US and was never "disgusted" by it. Would love to get my hands on some now as it's been so long. You should watch your arguments.
For many humans "watch your arguments" carries the same tone as "pay attention to those boxes you're standing on".
A reasonable assumption here would be the GP questioning the assumed universal truth of:
We've had purpose-built machines that outperform every human at specific tasks for over a century now. Just because a subset that's popular these days (the "humanoid" and dog-like variants) invoke some psychological and cultural (we've been primed by media for over 150 years at this point) fears, doesn't make them more capable than they seem.
Sure, the thing can run real fast, but looking at it, that's pretty much all it actually can do. In contrast to a boring old industrial robot, though, being able to win a half-marathon or a 100m dash against any hypothetical human isn't all that useful, no?
Until then human is the best at navigating and moving across various terrain.
However had, I watched it, and I have some problems here.
First: these robots have barely any head. I think for a humanoid robot, you need to have a proper head with some weight in relation to the rest, otherwise it is just SIMULATING being humanoid. Then the feet; this is also a problem. Specifically the feet are not like human feet at all, they are more like stubs or elongated stubs with push-back being made-super easy. Usain Bolt does not have such short jokes of feet, so this comparison is unfair. Same with the hip area - I am sorry, but the hip structure of these robots is ABSOLUTELY not at all like a human. I am not even calling these humanoids.
Don't get me wrong, it is good that science and technology progresses and such robots may do things that robots solely with a wheel alone, may be unable to do, such as running, climbing, you name it. But I simply can not call them "humanoid". They are, IMO, simply not humanoid and not even humanoid-like.
For "proper" science fiction, have a look at the first Blade Runner movie, but also the first terminator. Initially Cameron thought Arnold was unfit because he was massive and the infiltrating cyborg should melt into the environment easily (which was better in Terminator 2, T1000 was kind of more "logical", but I hated the background storyline in Terminator 2, it made no sense to me, no clue why people preferred that over the original terminator movie). I am aware that these running robots don't aim to be a look-alike replacement, but they simply also should not be called humanoid robots right now. They simply are not humanoid. Thus one should not call them that way.
So a purpose-built (look at the thing - running is all it can actually do) two legged fast running robot doesn't seem all that impressive today. Cool? Sure! Useful? Not so much. Impressive? Whatever... it's just showing off at this point, much like Boston Dynamic's Atlas series that went nowhere (in contrast to this machine: this one did half marathon distance:)
The US is behaving like an industry incumbent, like Blackberry when the iPhone came out. That the US could fall behind on technology seems to have not crossed many minds. It will be very hard to overcome that first mover advantage.
More like "If this forum created by a guy from Silicon Valley..."
Watching robot after robot being taken away on a stretcher was pretty funny.