It's one thing for governments, who have some legitimacy in what they're doing, but have other people doing it … It's not going to happen.
How do you think he reconsiles this with Andy Rubin's new job? From the New York Times piece on Google's robotics division, headed by Rubin:
The company is tight-lipped about its specific plans, but the scale of the investment, which has not been previously disclosed, indicates that this is no cute science project.
At least for now, Google’s robotics effort is not something aimed at consumers. Instead, the company’s expected targets are in manufacturing — like electronics assembly, which is now largely manual — and competing with companies like Amazon in retailing, according to several people with specific knowledge of the project.
I guess it's fine for government and corporations to have autonomous robots, because of some vaugely-defined "legitimacy". I don't know. I can't make sense of it.