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Have you ever seen the tank of nightmare gas currently circulating across the web — the video the place a robotic canine fires an assault rifle? I’ve received good and dangerous information.
The excellent news: It’s in all probability only a harmful toy cobbled collectively by a Russian hoverbike startup man.
Vice traced the video again to a Russian hoverbike firm founder named Alexander Atamanov, who uploaded each the video and a high-res picture of the gun-dog-bot in March. each the bot itself, it’s not clear it’s something greater than a gun strapped to an current Unitree dogbot. (It’s not clear if the bot even goals or fires the gun itself.) his bigger Fb historical past, it appears possible that he merely slapped collectively a few issues he preferred into a brand new toy.
Why do I believe so? First, it’s clearly his: taking a detailed take a look at the high-res picture from Fb, you may see the bot has a definite patch that includes a white wolf on its aspect — and above that, a phrase. The phrase is his final identify: “Atamanov.”
Additionally, in 2019, the Hoversurf founder posted a video of himself plinking away on the vary with a gun that appears almost an identical to the one mounted on the bot — and with the very same patch on his shoulder. And in February 2022, a month earlier than he posted the dog-bot video, he additionally posted an image of himself taking part in with what seems to be the identical Unitree robotic, solely holding a espresso cup as an alternative of a gun.
Scrolling additional by way of his Fb web page, he appears to get pleasure from taking part in with navy tools like APCs and assault helicopters, too. In the event you add how impractical this explicit gun-dog mixture appears — these sorts of robots are programmed to naturally carry out every kind of balanced motions and but this one doesn’t appear to be compensating for primary recoil — it appears way more possible he slapped a few his pursuits collectively, and fewer possible he’s critically purusing a weapon of battle.
Then once more, certainly one of this man’s rivals within the flying rideable house occurs to be Kalashnikov, the corporate behind the AK-47…
Atamanov didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The dangerous information: A robotic canine with a gun is a factor that already exists.
I perceive if a video of a canine firing a totally computerized weapon sends a chill down your backbone. Nonetheless, a greater second to start worrying may need been final October, when an organization really introduced a robotic canine with a gun that’s purpose-built for the duty.
One other attainable second: when it was revealed final September that Iran’s prime nuclear scientist was assassinated by a killer robotic that was distant managed by a sniper over 1,000 miles away.
Or final April, when the French military began testing Boston Dynamics’ robotic canine Spot in fight situations, admittedly with none apparent dog-mounted weaponry.
Or any of the occasions we’ve seen small robots with out canine legs — like, say, small drones — get outfitted with weaponry. The world’s steadily coming to the belief that the know-how actually does exist already to show robots into lethal weapons, and the actually scary thought is that they may start killing autonomously, in the event that they haven’t already begun. It appears virtually inevitable at this level, canine or no.
However there’s something notably dastardly about man’s greatest buddy probably turning on us, I admit. Black Mirror explored that concept brilliantly virtually 5 years in the past, and each time we see a robodog getting a brand new means like opening a door, it’s onerous for me to not think about how the horror film may play out.
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