Very good boys? The dark, dystopian rise of robot dogs | Arwa Mahwadi
TL;DR
Pups that carry your shopping are one thing – but what about the mechanical canines being bought up in the US by ICE? Or the mutant mutts due to be developed by a startup called Warhound? Have you ever wanted to hang out with a dog with no fur, no face and a chip in its shoulder? If so, I suggest you head to San Francisco, where a startup called Dimensional has been paying people $20 (£15) an hour to walk four-legged robot dogs.
Nauti's Take
For AI teams, the dog-walking experiment mainly exposes how dependent physical agents are on real-world training data. Before testing such systems, verify where the movement data comes from, whether people consented, and how it will be reused.
For robots deployed by public agencies or security teams, remote control, audit logs, and a dependable emergency stop matter before autonomy becomes a selling point.
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