Remember when you first saw these robotic dog things several years ago and immediately knew they would one day be used aggressively in some sort of militaristic or security context? And then some people out there were all like, “No! These robot dogs that can easily have cameras and weapons mounted on them will never be used for evil!”
Turns out, they’re being used for evil: In this case, AI companies are snapping them up to protect data centers, according to Fortune.
It makes sense why. AI companies envision a future where humans don’t have jobs, so of course the security guards they would hire to protect the data centers that serve as the beating heart of AI technology would also be self-employed.
AI data centers are now guarded by $300,000 robot dogs
The robot dogs aren’t cheap either. Just one of them can cost up to $300,000. Still, some of these AI companies see them as a long-term investment, assuming they will eventually pay for themselves within a few years. All of this rests on the assumption that the AI boom will continue indefinitely, which it may not.
There is also the vexing issue of AI companies facing fierce opposition to the construction of data centers from members of communities where those centers would be built. People don’t want data centers in their neighborhood for various reasons.
There’s also a dark, poetic quality to it all. Software-driven artificial intelligence is being positioned by industry leaders as a replacement for office jobs, and autonomous robots are lining up to take over your manual labor tasks, leaving nothing for the rest of us.
For now, robot dogs are just flashy, wildly expensive toys that are probably more symbolic of the AI industry’s booming sense of bulletproof profit than an actual threat to anyone’s livelihood. But it could be a dark harbinger of things to come.
