As if robot dogs weren’t borderline disturbing enough when set loose in the wild, now someone has thought it was a good idea to supply one of the Boston Dynamics prototypes with ChatGPT.
Not only that, but they also gave it Google’s Text-to-Speech voice modulation, so if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like if your dog could actually talk, well…this is nothing like that.
Machine learning engineer Santiago Valdarrama posted the video to Twitter, and in it, you can watch “Spot” the robot dog verbally answer system questions.
We integrated ChatGPT with our robots.
We had a ton of fun building this!
Read on for the details: pic.twitter.com/DRC2AOF0eU
— Santiago (@svpino) April 25, 2023
He explains more in the thread.
“These robots run automated missions every day. Each one includes miles-long, hard-to-understand configuration files only engineers can understand. …That’s where ChatGPT comes in.
We show it the configuration files and the mission results. We then ask questions using that context. Put that together with a voice-enabled interface, and we have an awesome way to query our data.”
Image Credit: Twitter
The “dog” shakes its head to say no and bows to say yes, and even though the video should feel harmless, most people don’t see it that way.
“We know that robot dog that triggers lots of ‘here comes our future overlords’ jokes when new videos drop? It has AI now.”
You know that robot dog that triggers lots of "here come our future overlords" jokes when new videos drop?
It has AI now. https://t.co/QCpSNmNYAr
— Philip Bump (@pbump) April 27, 2023
That said, integrating robots and chatbots has always been the plan according to Microsoft and OpenAI.
“We believe that our work is just the start of a shift in how we develop robotics systems, and we hope to inspire other researchers to jump into this exciting field.”
Get used to the slightly uncomfortable feeling these videos give you, friends. It’s just your subconscious trying to fight back.