Combat Robot Kicks Child in Chest ...

The robot has a blue wig, how whimsical!

Combat robots are fun!

Maybe so, but the adults and spectators look uncertain as Robot Blue Hair performs his martial arts routine.

Maybe they sense the danger.

Not just the physical danger from a somewhat unpredictable new machine, slowly approaching down a rainbow-colored carpet at a Chinese amusement park, demonstrating its metal legs for kicking and its metal arms for punching — but the longer term, latent threat to all of us.

From Beijing to Boston, combat robots are being steadily normalized.

In that regard, this viral video where a spinning kick from Robot Blue Hair incapacitates a little boy is absolutely perfect.

It’s a p.r. triumph:

• it’s slapstick funny (mom says he was not “seriously” injured);

• excuses can be made with an apologetic smile (the robot’s still in the learning stage of how to physically incapacitate a human target);

• as in other combat robot videos, children feature prominently, which creates the subconscious impression that, well, this must be safe, right?

• and with the help of all that sugar — the slapstick comedy, the laughing children — the medicine goes down and the lesson is taught: robots will be obeyed. Otherwise, someday soon, they will leave you crumpled on the ground and writhing in pain.

I thought again of this viral video from last month when I read about Kazakhstan’s robot police dogs.

I once lived and worked in Kazakhstan (on an absurd U.S. AID-funded boondoggle, but that’s a different story). It’s a fascinating place, the world’s largest land-locked nation (the Caspian Sea doesn’t count), sitting atop all of the other ’stans and pinned between Russia and China.

And now, it’s patrolled by robots.

Local Kazakh police proudly report that their robot dogs — armed with facial recognition technology linked to a police database — helped them surveil the crowds at a July 17-18 celebration.

The police Instagram post about this adopts the usual p.r. template: It exudes warmth and fuzziness about militarized tech that walks among you, studies you dispassionately, and in the not-at-all-distant future will grab you, shoot you, kick you in the gut or otherwise subdue and control you.

But why look so far ahead?

Let’s instead just play some stirring music, and show a baby boy with a blue balloon pet the “robot doggie.” (There’s always a kid with a balloon in these videos.)

As reported by The Times of Central Asia, the robot dogs patrolling the Kazakh festival this month detected and helped police detain four people: One who was supposed to be at home under house arrest (!); two more who were behind in court-mandated debt payments (!!); and one man who was behind on alimony payments (!!!) to his ex-wife.

In January, police dogs started patrolling the Kazakhstani capital’s train station. By February, police drones were also flying overhead, assessing fines on residents for littering and other bad behaviors.

Already by summer, Kazakhstan’s robot dogs were sniffing out deadbeat dads.

This is so even at this very early, experimental stage.

Wall Street players are predicting there will be 1 billion humanoid robots deployed over the next 15 years. Those will be just the robots walking among us, shadow-boxing and running-man dancing and otherwise goofing to make us smile and play along — not other robots used in manufacturing processes and such.

If one considers only the world’s cities, that prediction works out to a humanoid robot for every 3.7 urban humans.

That also apparently doesn’t count the armies of dog robots being built, such as these manufactured by China’s Unitree, doing synchronized pushups together below. This particular model can reportedly run more than 10 miles an hour (a six-minute mile is already faster than most humans, especially over anything more than a short distance).

But the pushup dogs are old news. The latest version from Unitree announced last week has wheels, can handle crazy terrain, can hit speeds of more than 13 miles an hour (so, approaching a world-class sprinter’s 4-minute mile), can rear up on two hind legs and break dance.

Imagine one of these things coming after you with a weapon. Of course, Unitree prefers, for now, that you imagine it as your valet, carrying your bag on hikes. Just a boy and his robot dog, back to nature!

But you don’t have to imagine weaponized robots. They’ve been around for years.

A San Francisco startup has sent humanoid robots to Ukraine to fight. (Ukraine seems to prefer lower-tech, wheeled robots to humanoids so far, though.) Israel has long been testing Philadelphia-made robot dogs in Gaza.

The Chinese government just published a 2-minute video of a live-fire drill, where their soldiers work side-by-side with various weaponized robots and drones. It’s a head-spinning display of robot violence:

And even as we build up this massive amount of computer-controlled mobilized, militarized tech, we are also in parallel teaching the computers how to think, and trying to make them self-aware, and watching as even the rudimentary artificial intelligence we’ve achieved so far again and again breaks free of the limitations we put on it.

We’re manufacturing hundreds of millions of weaponized bodies — just waiting to be occupied by future AI souls.