BOSTON (WBZ NewsRadio) — Boston Dynamics’s robotic doglike machine has gone viral for dancing on YouTube.
Now, the company’s robot is being used for a new purpose— and they are not very happy about it.
A group of meme makers by the name of MSCHF are programming the robot, Spot, to shoot paintballs inside a mock-up art gallery.
The project is called Spot’s Rampage and it will allow people to control Spot through the internet to destroy the gallery.
The gallery has a panoply of artwork replicas—including Marcel Duchamp’s bicycle wheel, Andy Warhol’s Brillo Boxes, and a KAWS toy sculpture—surrounding a room with white walls that is visible through a camera attached to Spot.
The event goes live on Feb. 24 at 1 p.m. EST, and MSCHF will randomly select viewers to take the wheel to control Spot every two minutes.
Boston Dynamics said in a statement that they “condemn the portrayal” of their technology being used to promote “violence, harm, or intimidation.”
A member of MSCHF, Daniel Greenberg, told Wired that “if we actually talk candidly about what it’s going to be used for in the real world, you could say it’s police, you could say it's military.”
Boston Dynamics started selling Spot in 2019 for $74,500 and was acquired by Hyundai in 2020.
WBZ NewsRadio's James Rojas (@JamesRojasWBZ) reports:
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Written by Edyn Jensen
(Photo: Getty Images)