Yes, hyena robots are scary. But they’re also a cunning marketing ploy | Technology

Bootstrapping the narrative of robot apocalypse into discourse about real technology pervades the discourse of hi-tech. Elon Musk talks endlessly of the singularity; even the more measured Sundar Pichai anthropomorphizes AI. Ultimately, this distracts us from thinking about digital infrastructures built out of unaccountable practices. It makes it harder for us to think through complex cases, like when Uber’s self-driving car hit a pedestrian. As recent documents show, this had nothing to do with the robot car and everything to do with shoddy engineering and a bad safety culture.

Boston Dynamic’s videos are, to be sure, entertaining. But by raising the alarm of robot takeover they achieve the self-serving purpose of reasserting unrealistic fantasies about technology’s power, while redirecting away from more critical examination of human decisions and design practices.