AI wants to be your dog

When ChatGPT meets robo-rovers, weird things happen.

Meet “Spot 3.0.” Don’t let the goofy face and the cute headdress fool you. Source: Boston Dynamics.

What happens when you cross ChatGPT with a robot dog? Boston Dynamics decided to find out.

Boston Dynamics is a robotics lab out of MIT that became somewhat famous for making unintentionally terrifying robot dogs that look like Dobermans as if designed by H.R. Giger. [1]

The doggie bots were so disturbing that they inspired a Black Mirror episode [2] about killer robot dogs that hunt humans. Despite that, the company continues to work on a wide range of animate mobile creatures. And now they’ve outfitted some of them with with a microphone, a speaker, a comm link to a PC running ChatGPT, and turned them into tour guides for the Robotics Lab.

There’s some lag due to the wireless comms link, and the mouth/voice synchronization is straight out of Mystery Science Theater 3000. But damn that is… impressive? Eerie? Forcing me into an existential crisis where I question the value of my own existence?

They also gave “Spot” different personalities — British butler, 1920’s archeologist, Shakespearean time traveler, and a haiku-spouting entity named “Josh.” There’s even a “teenage” robot that sounds like your average prom queen.

Per Boston Dynamics

We were also surprised at just how well the LLM was at staying “in character” even as we gave it ever more absurd “personalities”. We learned right away that “snarky” or “sarcastic” personalities worked really well; and we even got the robot to go on a “bigfoot hunt” around the office, asking random passerby whether they’d seen any cryptids around.

Robots with snarky and sarcastic personalities? I am absolutely not feeling threatened by this in the least. If you need me, I’ll be hiding under my covers.

Who’s a good robot boy?

There are entire teams of researchers working on the problem of how to enhance the ability of robots and humans to peacefully co-exist. Like these folks at the University of Texas at Austin working on “human-machine” partnerships.

The idea is that we’ll be working alongside humanoid (and canine) robots in factories, warehouses, and libraries, or using them to take care of elders inside their homes — so we damned well better get used to them.

ICYMI: Will Human warehouse workers be replaced by robots?

The researchers recently received a grant from the National Science Foundation to study how students on the UT campus respond to Spot and his/her litter mates. Per the NSF:

A pair of robot dogs will work together, but they will not be "off leash." Observers will monitor them as they move around the campus, using virtual reality headsets to see through the "eyes" of the robot.

Collecting data on the community encounters and reactions to the robots is one of the core research goals. There are a number of variables that can affect the results, such as the size and the type of the robot; location of the encounter (e.g., indoors, outdoors); time of the encounter (e.g., day or night); how many people are encountered; and is the encounter during a time of high stress on campus (e.g., exam week).

Nothing like turning a corner in the dorms during finals week and finding this guy staring back at you.

Meet Spot 1.0, circa 2017. Do not pet the robo-dog. Source: Numerama.

As NSF writer Jason Bates notes, the first automobiles were a bit scary in the early part of the 20th century. They would spook the horses ambling along beside them. Eventually, though, the cars replaced the horses and we all got used to them.

We are currently in the Spook the Horses phase of robotics. But eventually, they may become our dance partners.

Would you have a robot for a pet — or vice versa? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

[1] Most famous for designing the monsters in the Alien movies. I wonder what his nightmares must be like.

[2] “Metalhead,” Season 4, Episode 5. I watched it last night before going to bed. That was a mistake.

[3] There is no footnote number 3.