Toyota eyes poaching robot makers from Google

Boston Dynamics’ robots are at their best on shaky ground. The wobbly BigDog, its larger LS3 sibling, and the humanoid Atlas all shamble forward and recover from falls. The company, for sale by its owner Google, is now looking for a buyer, and now it appears they may have finally found a firm place to land: Toyota.
The Tokyo-based company has nursing care and medical robots in development, in addition to working on self-driving cars. Toyota could add up to 300 personnel to its robotics division with the acquisitions, the report said.

The White House Is Trying To Avoid A Robot Apocalypse

The Obama administration is seeking policy advice from several AI experts

Photo Illustration: R. A. Di Ieso

There’s good news for anyone worried about being enslaved by robotic overlords: the Obama administration is investigating possible regulations that would prevent artificial intelligence from stealing our jobs and killing off the human race.
This week, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy brought together legal and technology experts for a workshop at the University of Washington School of Law about regulating AI. And while most of the panelists and speakers said there is no need to fear total robotic domination, the event itself proves there is a growing political concern about the legal, economic, and safety ramifications of fast-evolving machine learning and robot technology.