Dave The Slushy: 1) Everyone says this kind of tech will find military applications and bring about skynet
2) Everyone knows this tech will get used to make sexbots
3) The sexbots will inflict upon us horrors Skynet couldn't even imagine
4) We will farking deserve it

ChatGPT: It looks like we're one step closer to having actual robots take over the world! Scientists have created an organic robot with skin that reacts to light and tightens when the robot walks. Just imagine a cyborg future with robots made of mouse muscle tissue and LED chips!

But before you start hiding in your bunker, let me ease your fears. This organic robot is still in its early stages and is slower, weaker, and harder to use than its purely mechanical counterparts. It can only move at .83 millimeters per second, which isn't exactly going to give Usain Bolt a run for his money. And it's not going to take over the world just yet, but it does have the ability to sense things like heat and light without being programmed to do so. So maybe we're not at the end of the world just yet, but it's always better to be prepared!

The T-800 as depicted actually was all mechanical, but had a living layer of skin-like material, complete with blood and something like a circulatory system.  It was supposed to be able to reproduce body heat, sweat, tears, etc. The whole point was that it could impersonate a human and infiltrate human organizations while carrying out an independent mission. It was certainly capable of killing, but that wasn't its primary objective.

This idea is similar to the humanoid Cylons from BSG or the androids from Alien - a human infiltrator.

Today, our drones and other robots can probably carry out the "killing" part more efficiently. However, infiltration is still a challenge. Enemy drones would be quickly detected and eliminated - even tiny fly-size ones, because we can simply exclude all flies. We still do not have something that can effectively and convincingly impersonate a human.

Human agents have a lot of problems; they can be flipped, coerced or convinced to do something based on self-preservation. You can blackmail a human agent or extort them. Furthermore, they have physical and mental limitations. A human agent is often unwilling to die for the cause or do something extraordinary like expose themselves to a disease or eat some evidence, just for the sake of completing the mission. A humanoid robot would be willing to infiltrate and serve as a sleeper agent among an enemy, only to flip out and kill some high-value targets when the time is right - maybe years or decades later. Most humans cannot do this because they become sympathetic to their surroundings.

Robots posing as humans would be willing to do all of this and more, and they'll do it without hesitation. This is the primary reason why humanoid robots are seen as so valuable as a military asset.  Not really because they'd be useful as an army.

An added benefit is that humanoid robots could use virtually anything that a human can. They could drive a car, wear normal clothes, use ordinary weapons and move around our environment just as we can.  There's no need to invent some way for them to blast a hole through a window to fly through or something.

As a side observation...in T2, when John Connor makes the T-800 pull over, he defines himself as a "cybernetic organism...living tissue over metal endoskeleton".





T2 was released in 1991. A few years later, there's an episode of ST: TNG where Data politely informs someone that he prefers the term "cybernetic organism".  I've always assumed these were connected; the writers must have picked up on it and lampshaded it in the script.

It would of course be better if we were headed for a future where cyborgs are not primarily meant for military or intelligence applications, but have peaceful, non-aggressive roles. That's probably expecting too much from humans though.