I follow a couple of YouTubers who report on developments in the technological realm of AI and robotics. Recently, one described work at Meta on a home companion/helper robot based on the “dog” platform that many robot developers have adopted. Give Meta credit for opportunistic exploitation of the love that people have for dogs. The ‘tuber was very optimistic about Large Language Models and AI to be deployed in everything, including your toaster. Sound familiar? I’m not optimistic that all technology can make all of life all better. We have “smart” toasters and will soon get “superintelligent” toasters. (How will our toasters feel about that?)
Knowing humans, I predict that robot dogs will exhibit all the human nature that we see in dog meatware. We will see happy, charging-cord-wagging eDogs, but also aggressive, abused and neglected ones. We know there are guys who like to train their pit bulls to attack. I have no doubt that we will also have eDogs whose owners have downloaded the attack update from the Meta app store. You know that the marketplace of apps will provide all that people want in the name of making a sale. That the Meta software is said to be open source only makes every option more likely, even if it’s only in an underground marketplace.