Boston Dynamics and Deepmind Form New AI Partnership
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The robotics world is abuzz with the news of Boston Dynamics and DeepMind forming a new AI partnership, sparking debate about the viability of advanced hardware. While some commenters are skeptical, pointing out the historical failures of lifelike autonomous hardware, others counter with examples of successful robotics advancements in China and the US. The discussion highlights the challenges of training robots in the real world, with one commenter noting that simulation can only take it so far before real-world testing is required. As the conversation unfolds, it becomes clear that the key to success lies in tackling unstandardized tasks that require physical manipulation, with many noting that human environments are often tailored to human needs, making it a complex problem to solve.
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At least they didn't kill it I guess and BD got to live on as an independent.
Humanoid robot Olympic Games in China:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y-tElcmJVE
Also, reminded - Russian "localization" (typical Russian hi-tech today, especially when on government investment, is simple rebadge of a Chinese tech) - even good Chinese robots starts to fall like drunk:
https://youtu.be/WVKxw72vlmo?t=15
and for the GGP comment:
>self driving delivery vans with a humanoid delivery robot
why humanoid? Glorified Roomba-like robots would do such job just fine. Every time seeing how the Amazon driver parks his van and runs around in our complex placing packages in front of the doors and making photos of the placed packages i'm wondering why Amazon wouldn't use 5-10 such Roombas per van instead.
Idk where people are getting the idea that systems designed to mimic biological brains will have machinelike precision whilst also being flexible to adapt to new situations.
This is probably something people don't understand about humanoid robots. Nobody is dumb enough to replace their CNC machines with humanoid robots holding power tools and yet that is what you're being sold on when Elon Musk is teasing a trillion dollar valuation.
Instead, the vast majority of humanoids will be used for pretty boring FedEx or door dash style logistics work, not much different from wheeled robots.
Steps. Garden gates. Uneven surfaces. Communal entrances.
The real world is messy and certainly not flat.
Some sort of wheeled-legged-centaur type robot might work though.
There are probably some exceptions. I can imagine robo lawnmowers getting good enough to handle my yard at some point if not adjacent cleanup. But doing a monthly housecleaning? Don't think so. (And a Roomba really wouldn't be very useful; it's barely useful at my brother's house that is practically built for a Roomba.)
However, houses and things inside it were designed by humans for humans, for either aesthetic or 'easy for humans to do' reasons. I sometimes wonder then what if they were designed from the ground up with let's call it 'robot repairability'/automation in mind. I don't know exactly what that looks like, but I'd imagine a lot more modular, a lot more brutalist/uglier, and probably a lot more expensive. But it's an interesting thing to think about nonetheless.
Chinese tech has come a long way in the last 5 years. Roomba just went bankrupt for a good reason.
They will need help doing the finer control things, and they won't do everything. But definitely useful enough, especially for older folk.
Boston Dynamica: Majority Owner: Hyundai Motor Group (80%) Minority Owner: SoftBank (20%)
It's that old tinfoil hat theory that the Jetsons and the Flintstones took place in the same point in history, the Jetsons were in the sky with their mind-bending technology, all their needs met, meanwhile the Flintstones are down on the planet, working menial jobs wearing and eating literal scraps.
The common man will never see a household robot, that is unless they cobble together enough components that have been discarded by the haves to be used by the have-nots.
To the point of your statement, humanoid robots will certainly fill lots of niches, it'll be fascinating to see what becomes prevalent first: menial labor, agentic-type household assistance, tutoring the kids, walking grandma across the busy intersection, sex tasks, etc.
That’s the current situation. Not tinfoil hat needed.
I recently watched a short clip (1) of the comedians who followed Joe Rogan to Austin lamenting how bad of an idea it was.
Notably Shane Gillis described to Rogan:
Gillis: Yeah you got a driver and a body guard and do Karate, it’s fun. I’m walking around thinking “I’m going to get fucked up”
Rogan: Don’t walk around, gotta secure the perimeter.
This is real life today and both of these guys are either millionaires or incredibly popular comedians with significant amounts of cash to throw around.
If the distinction between these two people is that broad, you’re well past conspiracy territory.
I can tell you for a fact in the trenches of Chicago and Miami where I have a lot of transiently homeless friends, they are living way worse than the Flintstones because they don’t even have a community to rely on.
1: https://youtube.com/shorts/shYkz-dlLQs?si=prN07elAoX-jWmNs
– for small durations of never.
Look at real flexible manufacturing systems to see how much of a bullshit idea that is: https://youtu.be/gUvE2eFH6CY
Everything is transported via the central stacker crane that is directly connected to every machine. You don't need legs. This just leaves the arms and here is the thing, you can just have two robot arms in the same robot cell and call it a day. The humanoid form factor adds nothing.
Also what makes you think you don't have to program the humanoid robots? Again, everyone seems to think that if you build a human shaped robot, human level intelligence will automatically come as a result of the shape of the robot. The moment you remove the head, the intelligence vanishes.
What a shocking lack of imagination. Do you seriously think in a hundred years you'll still hold this opinion?
If we get there, and I think we are there now, then the worst case scenario is having to tediously implement the hundreds of thousands of little tasks and skills needed to be effective for a particular job.
The best case scenario is we run training videos for AI that gets cloned to fleets, and then you can deploy the equivalent of robotic Amish carpenters to build housing, or robotic warehouse operators, and you're paying a tenth of the cost with a hundredth of the hassle for the same work output as a human, and the efficiency and effectiveness only go up year over year, while human labor has more or less peaked.
I'd rather have a fleet of general purpose robots which I can put to any use within the human repertoire than technically more efficient and cheaper specialty robots that only perform singular tasks in an assembly line.
This is a bit unclear to me. Is this implying that it hasn't been the time for industrial robots?
It was a knee-jerk reaction as opposed to detailed analysis.
Bard → Gemini → Jules → Antigravity (they can't even come up with a good product name)
Their GCP console is a mess. Wanna get a Gemini API? Good luck with that.
And where is the "internet through balloons"? Where's their quantum HPC? Where is half the stuff they demo every year to devs to prove that they're still relevant but never ship them? e.g., where is that smart glass they used in their demo last year that had Gemini in it and could analyze what you see? Where's their "calls any restaurant on your behalf" ML model they introduced many years ago?
Google has lost it, and to make things even worse, occasionally they poke at their successful products and googllify them too (YT likes disappearing, Gmail with Gemini, Google Search performing worse than Bing, etc.)
"Where's their "calls any restaurant on your behalf" ML model they introduced many years ago?"
It might not run on your LibreNut 9000, but it works on my Pixel.
Now instead, they're ahead of end2end integration of their section of robotics - especially with actual business customers that gave them a great head-start in figuring out how to integrate them as a product.
- note that google already has investment in industrial robotics with intrinsic ai (that is the confluence of OSRF, bot and dolly, and a few other robotics/ai companies)
- this partnership specifically seems to be focused on humanoid robotics, which is not taken seriously by industrial manufacturing folks
Here's BD's latest promo: https://youtu.be/sd8ivhpjI6g?si=HoTDWpPxXFc3H7xc, issued two hours ago.
Nobody else getting "scene-setting advert from dystopian movie" vibes about this whole thing? You know "nobody could have imagined, in 2026, that the Atlases would take over the world. We'd let them look after our children, service our cars and teach us foreign languages. But then the hallucinations started, the profit margins weren't wide enough so the remaining controls were removed and slowly word of the 'accidents' emerged."
Just me?