Terminator now: China is exploring humanoid robots for war - Asia Times

Just two days after the games concluded, the official newspaper of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) called for researchers to accelerate moving these cutting-edge machines from the laboratory to military training grounds. They referred to them not as experiments, but as “combatants.”

As a robotics researcher myself, working daily with robot simulation, reinforcement learning, and the foundational software and simulation tools that power them (such as ROS 2 and Gazebo), I watch these developments with a mix of awe and deep concern.

The public often views humanoid robots as clunky sci-fi novelties. The reality is far different: the hardware is already highly capable, and the software is advancing at an unprecedented pace. ## Support Asia Times

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Asia Times

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Terminator now: China is exploring humanoid robots for war

At the World Humanoid Robot Games in Beijing, a humanoid robot named Tiangong Ultra ran the 100-meter sprint in a staggering 8.64 seconds, shattering Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt’s legendary human world record of 9.58 seconds.

The internet laughed at the robots’ awkward, lurching finishes and spectacular falls – but the laughter masked a chilling reality. With enough skill, a dedicated adversary can replicate advanced robotic behavior with relative ease. We can no longer afford to treat humanoid robotics purely as an academic pursuit or a commercial novelty. We need an urgent international conversation about how to control these advances.

Just as we regulate the export of certain microchips and aerospace components, we must begin protecting the software architecture and training pipelines that give these machines their minds. The hardware is walking out of the lab – it is time our policies caught up.

Kartikeya Walia is senior lecturer, Department of Engineering, Nottingham Trent University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.