"they carry out the very precise movements that their — exceedingly clever — programmers design to move"

That is indeed how robots worked 20 years ago. I don't know about the BD robots in the video, but today robots like the BD "dog" robot do not perform programmed moves: they execute goal oriented directives. They know how to walk and move just like humans do. No one is coding each step.

Indeed there is no emotion behind them, and you are right, that the video is kind of a lie in that sense.

But there might well be a complex mental model. Machine learning has come a long way.

Yes, it is scary; just as genetic engineering is scary: it can cure illness or create a horrible weapon.

The author makes an important point: that people need to be educated about robots and machine intelligence: what looks and talks like a person might not be a person.