Good on you. I quit my job in the defence sector over two decades ago for the same reasons. Best decision I ever made.

Well it's not all bad. Some of the stuff we did was entirely defence and disaster support. I basically got to choose projects I worked on until I was told I couldn't.

Not really. Offence is sometimes the best defence. But when people start rubbing their hands at the prospect of a war being their retirement plan I don't want to be around them.

Good on you for quitting, but unless you know of people in your network who're willing to buy what you're making not sure if this will work. Often times its the simplest ideas that make the most profitable businesses. You know, like selling handmade soap or coffee. The problem with what you're doing is you are trying to enter a market as the first person doing it. Which means nobody has taken the risk to prove there is a demand, and without that it means you're potentially burning a ton of time and resources with no logical place to pivot to next.

I am building a very similar thing after a short stent at a robotics company in 2024. The industry is very far behind more general dev experience and tooling.

I am forced to accept the popularity of ROS but I find it to generally be a terrible experience. Are you considering an alternative? Have you used foxglove?

Hey! Great to hear from someone in the same boat. I completely agree, the general dev experience and tooling around ROS can be deeply frustrating...

I am definitely looking into Foxglove! It seems to solve many of the transport/protocol headaches, but I feel like there's still a massive gap in how we actually interact with the robots day to day, especially when you are not glued to a desktop monitor.

I'd love to hear more about your experience. What specific part of the tooling drove you crazy enough to start building an alternative?

(Also, if you are open to a quick 15-min chat to share "war" stories, let me know!)

Would love to. My email is my username at gmail or my first name at my username dot com.

I will second this. You might not be able to get away without ROS compatibility depending on the market but a dependancy on it is a big pain in the neck from my point of view.

As a citizen of a country currently defending in a war, unmanned systems are a literal lifesaver. We can send an armed robot where we previously would have to send a soldier. This is a good thing and before the war many had the same pacifist sentiment in the tech sector, but it's completely reversed now.

Though I can understand your position being in a country that's not defending itself currently.

Thank you so much for quitting and putting the long-term needs of humanity over your short-term economic comfort. This is nothing short of a heroic move.

I hope you are able to convince some of your colleagues to do likewise.

Robots are everywhere. Especially in the factories. I think making things automatic is good, all those stupid jobs, moving all day something from one place to another, manually is pure waste of human energy. If this energy is redirected to education, and more meaningful work, those people will be much more valuable for their community and the world. If robots are used in that direction, they can do a lot of good things, and there will be no ethical lines to cross.

Helping people enhance is a good thing!

Nobody is objecting to the loss of bad jobs. The jobs themselves are not the problem. The problem is that we tie basic human dignity to how much value that human can produce, and then remove the ability to produce that value. It leads to the stratification of society between the people who own the automation and the people who don't. That's always been a problem but we're about to enter a period of exponentially worse growth of that problem, beyond the ability of social systems to handle. A 'k shaped' future is not stable.

> Nobody is objecting to the loss of bad jobs. The jobs themselves are not the problem.

Very strong disagree; a lot of people is objecting. A job on an assembly line may be "bad" for somebody, but for somebody else can be a lifeline, if they won't be able to find another job soon enough and/or in reasonable conditions. Long-term, the job market can rebalance (and if unemployed people are supported in their education, it's great), but short-term displacement is a serious issue.

If your job is that tedious a robot could do it, it's a bad job. Do you think Sam Altman wastes a single minute on operations and the actual minutae of running a business? Fuck no he gets wageslaves like me and yo to do it

Every year, fewer and fewer people are capable of doing jobs that robots cannot do. That's sort of the whole conundrum here.

"Robots" broadly defined are getting more capable and more intelligent at a significantly faster rate than humans are.

This obviously produces incredible economic surplus, but 1) that surplus is naturally captured by the owners of those robots and not the people they replaced, and 2) doesn't seem clear that all the negative consequences of mass obsolescence are solvable by economic surplus even in theory.

Search "Humans are becoming horses" by CGP grey. He's making the exact same point as you except his is 15 years old and still hasn't passed.

I ask you to follow your premise to it's conclusion... who's paying for it these robots and who buys the stuff the robots make? Other robots?? In this world where robot serves robot, where exactly did we disappear to?

If you want to see what just productivity improvements (with no social innovations) naturally does, you can go read about the Gilded Age. Productivity improvements are necessary but not sufficient to enhance human wellbeing. Productivity improvements by themselves appear to simultaneously suppress quality of life for those below the productivity and/or capital ownership bar while increasing quality for those above it.

Yes, an economy is perfectly capable of orienting itself around satisfying the wants of the few people who have a lot of capital at the expense of the many who have little capital. Why wouldn't this be possible?

It obviously creates systemic risk in the economy, which is one of many reasons it should be mitigated by policy and taxation, but I'm not sure why you're acting like it's some mathematical impossibility.

Not sure anyone said anything about humans "disappearing," just driven to extreme economic hardship despite ample overall productivity, which again we have literally hundreds of real world examples of throughout history.

> Not sure anyone said anything about humans "disappearing," just driven to extreme economic hardship despite ample overall productivity,

Just answer my question, who's buying all the stuff the robots are making when everyones "driven to extreme economic hardship"?

Again with a strawman. You should consider engaging with the arguments people are actually making, and not the silly versions you make up in your head.

No one said "everyone" is being driven to extreme economic hardship. Without that word, your implication doesn't quite work :)

Here's a rephrasing of your question using the dynamic that I actually described. Let me know if you still need me to fill in the blanks for you:

> when automated systems owned by fewer and fewer people are responsible for greater and greater proportions of economic surplus, who buys the output of those systems?

Do you need help answering that question still?

You can't answer it can you? A simple rebuttal to this dystopian future you present, where robots do everything and somehow make a few people rich, but at the same time the economy is fine despite nobody having any actual money to spend.... Make it make sense, you do you, just sayin

Ah it appears you do need some help.

In such a scenario there are two sources of consumption: a very large low-income base and a very small high-income sliver.

This is exactly what we saw during the Middle Ages (until concluded by the Black Death and broad peasant revolts), early Modernity (until concluded by economically motivated political revolutions all over the world), and the Gilded Age (until concluded by an economic collapse followed by broad social reforms).

It's hilarious that you're just asserting the impossibility of something we have literally actually seen play out dozens of times all over the globe over thousands of years.

Productivity improvements → extreme wealth inequality → economic, political, or social collapse → repeat

The more advanced the technology and the markets in which it performs (by definition) the more levered and rapid the productivity gains are, the more extreme the inequality produced -- again as we're seeing play out in real time (https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2025/1125-yang-...)

The smug implication of "well that obviously wouldn't be stable!" is actually not a rebuttal to "this process will produce instability." It's clear you're working in reverse from, "this would be inconvenient if true" to "therefore it cannot be true." But history and current trajectory shows us unambiguously: it is.

> This is exactly what we saw during the Middle Ages

Except technology has been progressing all this time, and has actually increased the lifetimes of populations.

>In such a scenario there are two sources of consumption: a very large low-income base and a very small high-income sliver.

You're describing, vaguely, a system with few rich and mostly poor people.... You think that's some kind of insight, except that's how civilised society has operated from day one. This is different from your "tech has always progressed but with robots this time it's different" idea you started out with

> It's hilarious that you're just asserting the impossibility of something we have literally actually seen play out dozens of times all over the globe over thousands of years.

See above

> The more advanced the technology and the markets in which it performs (by definition) the more levered and rapid the productivity gains are, the more extreme the inequality produced -- again as we're seeing play out in real time (https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2025/1125-yang-...)

You're talking about inequality, which has always existed, and not your original claim. I have no debate here. Robots making humans obsolete has not happened in history. Plenty of people (like you) believed the most recent advance in tech truly was the one that would put humans finally out of a job, but it never comes to pass. See the steam engine. See most big jumps in tech.

I see you're still making up arguments in your head so you can address them on this comment thread for some reason.

Try a notepad on your desk or a Markdown file, maybe an LLM for when you wish to argue against yourself.

> Every year, fewer and fewer people are capable of doing jobs that robots cannot do. That's sort of the whole conundrum here.

In short, this "conundrum" is no different from the thousands of other times advances in tech made jobs obsolete. You make the same mistake your ancestors made

Good job reading! Yes, that is correct. Technology has repeatedly shown this tendency to produce wealth inequality which, unmitigated, produces instability.

Now the next step is to read this sentence word for word:

> The more advanced the technology and the markets in which it performs (by definition) the more levered and rapid the productivity gains are, the more extreme the inequality produced

You and I both agree that technology is getting more advanced (where advanced == produces more leverage on human inputs), but for some reason you think this latest wave of technology is somehow different in that it won't produce inequality and therefore (left unmitigated) result in instability.

You're the one who thinks this latest wave of tech is unique, not me :)

> but for some reason you think this latest wave of technology is somehow different in that it won't produce inequality and therefore (left unmitigated) result in instability.

No. I'm refuting you claiming this time is different. I never said anything about inequality.

> You're the one who thinks this latest wave of tech is unique, not me :)

Is this trolling?

You've walked your claims back slightly with this "if left unmitigated" qualifier, so now ai means possibly the end of humans having something to do, maybe...

> Every year, fewer and fewer people are capable of doing jobs that robots cannot do. That's sort of the whole conundrum here.

This was your op. This is you thinking this is unique.

Mic drop. im done here

Wait you think me saying "year after year, thing happens" and then drawing a direct line of patterns all the way back to the Black Plague is me claiming "this time it's different?" Quite a take!

What do you think the word "naturally" means in the following sentence: "[economic] surplus is naturally captured by the owners of those robots and not the people they replaced"

What do you think this sentence means?: "which is one of many reasons [tech-driven inequality] should be mitigated by policy and taxation,"

What do you think the italicized just means here?: "If you want to see what just productivity improvements (with no social innovations) naturally does"

Or for that matter, what do you think the parenthetical means?

I have been arguing what the natural, unmitigated effects of technological development is the entire time. You've been arguing against some other made up position in your head, as pointed out more than 3 or 4 times now.

Have a good night kiddo ;)

> Every year, fewer and fewer people are capable of doing jobs that robots cannot do. That's sort of the whole conundrum here.

You think this is unique. You're just wrong. Not sure how to make that any simpler than it is

This view misses the difference between the transitional and structural effects of job loss.

Even if a job is "bad", losing it creates short-term shocks; especially low-income workers can’t instantly move to better jobs.

No doubt that structural (long term) changes are profitable for everybody - but both phenomenons can hold true.

... You realize you just made exactly the same point I did, right? I know you have two eyes and 10 fingers but give those appendages a rest and reread

Congrats!

I'm on a similar journey. I took flight 6 weeks ago and built a turn based board engine for human/agent delivery teams called Keel https://www.spoke.sh/keel. The grand vision is to apply the board engine as a control mechanism for work to be done and verified in deployed robot fleets.

After many many years in fintech, I'm now getting into robotics by trying to build an autonomous snow clearing robot, think of it like a miniature electric loader.

I've been using AI heavily to do this, so everything is in ROS2 since it's "standard" and AIs have pretty good training for it. I can see how it's annoying and suboptimal if you're writing manually and after a more integrated system, but it's been pretty good for getting up and running because it's "standard" and kinda plug and play. I see why you'd want to rewrite it for production, the endless processes and nodes and startup processes can get annoying

One of the more useful things I've done so far is actually not robotics related directly, it's a Godot based "game" with a ROS bridge that lets me drive the robot from Foxglove, which I will eventlly get a vlm based agent to drive. Seems much easier and faster than Issac Sim for getting started with.

Unfortunately, this is where robotics is going to end up. We already have drones being used in warfare. Humanoids are next.

Won't be surprised to see hundreds of thousands of humanoid robots strapped up with explosives running to their target or some of them flying to their target with drones attached.

That may be true but doesn't matter. The fact that weapons will exist and even the fact that they must exist, and even the fact that you benefit from them existing, none of that means you are obligated to work on or with them yourself.

Cakes exist and I even like them, and I do not choose to work at a bakery.

Why would you build a very expensive bipedal robot to suicide bomb someone, when as you note, a very cheap flying drone could do the same thing? (and more over: already is, this is literally how drones are used in Ukraine).

Which of course leads to point 2: it's very easy to take a moral stance on weapons when you don't think you're in any danger, nor going to be doing any of the fighting otherwise.

You think the US doesn't have enough weapons? Perhaps he thought that the weapons were likely to be used in aggression rather than defense?

Why would they have to be killer robots strapped with explosives? If we have highly capable semi-autonomous robots they could be non-lethal with no risk of life to their owners. It upends the entire paradigm of kill-or-be-killed warfare.

Rather than blowing up a school full of little girls, you could deploy a swarm of thousands of fast-moving cat-sized robots armed with tasers and bolas to identify and capture targeted enemy leaders.

Something like the robot from interstellar is probably more likely.

All the drone warfare developments remind me of the introduction of tanks during the first world war and perfected by the second world war. In the space of a few years they changed warfare. Then planes changed warfare again. Now drones. Makes you wonder what the next thing will be

He’s not talking about humanoid robots. He’s talking about tracked and wheeled weapons platforms that are essentially small RC tanks.

Yet there are also many civil uses for drones, and I can totally understand the desire to involved only with the civil side of robotics.

Much love and respect. I quit a job over a similar matter of principle. The decision to walk was easy, but the following year wasn't.

I'm glad I did it though. We have to few years on this earth to spend our energies hurting others.

> We have to few years on this earth to spend our energies hurting others.

Don't you live in a nation state that uses violence to maintain the order that you've come to enjoy? Here's a harsh dose of reality for ya, suffering is unavoidable... the trick is convincing the worker class that it's easier to just cooperate

I've lived in a lot of places, many of them on the receiving end.

I'm from a western country originally though, sure. Can't think of any wars we've been in during my lifetime that have done me much good. All wars of choice and aggression.

all suffering is equal in amount and necessity

therefore it makes no sense to consider one's own role in producing, mitigating, or directing suffering in the world

i am very smart

/s

>... but I found out they were planning to mount teleoperated weapons on the robotic platforms for a demo. I’m not willing to go there, so I resigned without another offer.

There's a ton of anti-drone defense startups currently, but how does one defend against armed bipedal robots? They're a lot heavier than most drones, so presumably they can be decked out with various types of shielding.

As far as I'm aware, phased plasma rifles in the 40-watt range don't yet exist.

Metal, accelerated to roughly two thousand feet per second, usually does the trick.

That won't work for long.

I'm putting my money on miniature RC Incom T-47s complete with tow cables.

It should be required that as soon as firmware detects that its bipedal host has, in fact—had its legs tied up by a snow speeder—that it must proceed with a claymation-style display of panic before falling onto its face.

Not helpful if all detractors leave a company that's going down a dangerous path, leaving all the trigger happy peeps to follow their worst instincts. But understandable regardless.

I do not work in robotics, but I would also like to thank you for listening to your conscience and resigning. The world needs more people like you. I hope your venture goes well!

My hot take: if a founder can't spin up a simple, self-hosted webform of some sort, I'm already wary of their technical skills.

Spinning it up is not the problem. You want to spend the time to throughly test it (or have your agent swarm test it) so you don’t waste the opportunity of having HN input?

I’d be wary of a founder with such bad NIH

I would hope a founder wouldn’t waste time on home-brewing their own web form when there are tons of off the shelf ones that all have no discernible difference.

It would be like writing your own email servers or calendar software. It would be a distraction at best.

I would let them do the opposite. I would make hnforms (maybe mdforms) based on the following idea.

Write a form in .md (even tell an llm to do it) and just put it online.

Only applicable if their core business is form-adjacent.

Web forms are simple like that slack notification thing is simple.

Slightly agree, however I prefer third party forms as it usually avoids a bunch of the BS with bot submissions, etc.

I think ethics will often fall short in general. I don't mean this to be limited to the comment above by the threadstarter, but when it comes to money, most people will choose money. People will have different threshold levels of what they want to accept.

Using a survey like this is IMO not ideal though.

If OP's story is true, it is commendable. Not everyone will choose principles over money.

I was in the past in the position of working for a corporation I personally consider to be vile, damaging to the world and society. Took me about 3 years to move elsewhere. I was not in the position to just quit, both due to finances and due to visa requirements.

I don't fault the common man for having to put up with things. But I will commend those that have the fortitude to at least turn and walk away.

There are so many ways to make money.

One doesn't need to compromise on one's values to earn.

I guess people making swords and arrows in the past had similar ethical dilemas in the begining, until they were attacked and then it became business as usual.

I would assume those things (at least arrows) were created for hunting food rather than killing other people, but I could be wrong. Maybe the tech there is that a lot of weapons can be created with simple components.

With robotics and AI, it feels like there are a lot of directions it could go that would lead to higher quality of life and not just temporary advantages for killing other people.

The only thing cringe is acting as if the answer to this age-old dilemma is obvious or the impact of any one person's decision is easy to calculate.

Virtue signaling > vice signaling every day :)

Both of them are fake and lame. The truth is in the middle.

Just like the OP’s post where he claims a moral high ground but then proceeds to feed the monster he created.

Why not just skip the fake bs and just say he’s going to make something cool?

Then again, engineers built the Death Star in Star Wars. I’m sure it was interesting work.

I don't think someone posting about their own moral calculus and decision-making necessarily constitutes "claiming the moral high ground". If you honestly felt like this post was an affront to your own moral footing, perhaps consider that a prompt for some introspection instead of lashing out at strangers in the comment section.

> I’m not willing to go there

Unfortunately it doesn't matter, some else will go ... just look at the ukr war.

Just to clarify: I didn't work at Boston Dynamics, I worked for a company that used their hardware (among others) as platforms for our own projects.

I knew about BD's history with DARPA, of course. The issue was that my company was doing some actually really interesting non-defense work, and then decided to pivot and mount teleoperated weapons on these platforms for a new demo. That’s when I submitted my resignation :)

People sometimes do things they aren't sure about, and then change their mind when the proof is right in front of them. I don't think this makes them a bad person, or wilful ignorance, maybe naive or optimistic, but you could accept employment with a company who you know had "shady" sponsors in the past hoping they'll do better in the future, then when the evidence mounts against the future actually being better, you decide to leave.

Human emotions and reasoning could be internally inconsistent and conflicting, yet everything is as it should be, counter-intuitively.

> Boston Dynamics has sworn off all war machine development [1].

That’s just marketing bs in the same vein as “Your privacy is very important to us.”. It means nothing.

Yep. Boston Dynamics has been dependent on military contracts since their founding in 1992.

The "no more military weapons" statement seems to have been after they were acquired by Hyundai.

Boston Dynamics' business is, basically, "mobility platforms." After all these years the basic development is all done; now they're pivoting to commercial markets.

There's no real difference between a "murderbot" and, say, a police riot-control platform, a fire-fighting platform, a forestry platform, etc.

They might not be explicitly developing weapon packages any more, but there are plenty of other companies who will be happy to take the money to build them onto Boston Dynamics' platforms.

“Your privacy is very important to us.” is technically true though. It probably does take away something from their profits, and sometimes the whole business idea, if they don't continue to rampantly violate it...

Boston Dynamics sells hardware as platforms for other companies to build on (ex: Spot/Stretch).

He said he worked with their hardware, not that he worked for Boston Dynamics.

Entirely possible to be working with a platform provided by Boston Dynamics at a company that is not engaged in weapons development.

They weren't working for BD, they were working for a company using BD's platforms.

DARPA sponsors lots of things that aren't specifically about weapons or killing people - medical treatment, logistics, etc. that are useful for defense/war but generally applicable.

Sure, Boston Dynamics is a bit more obvious there, but merely having DARPA funding doesn't mean it's about killing people.