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October 27, 2023 9:15 AM

Making Chat (ro)Bots: Boston Dynamics [previously] combines their robot dog Spot with ChatGPT, speech and image recognition, and some unsettlingly realistic vocal synthesis (plus googly eyes and a hat) to create the world's first fully autonomous, conversational robotic tour guide.

Tom Scott: An actual, real-world use for robot dogs

The Verge: Google is training robots the way it trains AI chatbots

Google Research: Introducing PaLM-SayCan, a robotics algorithm that combines the understanding of language models with the real-world capabilities of a helper robot

Engadget: Why putting googly eyes on robots makes them inherently less threatening

posted by Rhaomi (29 comments total)

I don't like the way this feels like the extended tutorial in an open-world FPS.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:18 AM on October 27, 2023 [7 favorites]

Sit. Sit. Siiit. Spot sit. SIT. SIT!
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that."
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 9:25 AM on October 27, 2023 [7 favorites]

oh my, what large googly eyes you have!
posted by supermedusa at 9:27 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Fucking hell. They aren't content to just show off the fancy-butler-talking robot dog (which is still pretty damn menacing with that creepy hand mouth). No, they have open the video with awkward woo about robot feelings: "my employment as a tour guide provides *great* satisfaction".

Helper bots are probably fine for rich disabled people and other forms of assistance, but they can take their bullshit chatbot "feelings" and shove them elsewhere, I'm out.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:29 AM on October 27, 2023 [6 favorites]

The Verge: Google is training robots the way it trains AI chatbots

Great, so they'll all be racist.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:40 AM on October 27, 2023 [13 favorites]

We all see this, right?
posted by Horkus at 9:47 AM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Spot would be less unsettling if they'd given more thought to how its 'mouth' moves while speaking. It's sort of the same rationale as using the googly-eyes. The puppetry part where its mouth moves sometimes--but not really in sync with the words--is really a missed opportunity for making a relatable robot.
posted by mittens at 9:50 AM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Great, so they'll all be racist.

The robot cars are already racist.
posted by Artw at 9:51 AM on October 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

I like the idea of a tour guide I can push around.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:01 AM on October 27, 2023

Robots unnerve me. I keep waiting for it to accidentally (?) punch a hole all the way through someone's head.
posted by pracowity at 10:27 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Spot would be less unsettling if they'd given more thought to how its 'mouth' moves while speaking.

… doesn't it seem kind of obvious that it would have been better if the bottom “jaw” was moving?
posted by brachiopod at 10:34 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

We are going about We3 backwards.

I cried on every page and still shiver with it now.
posted by MonsieurPEB at 10:42 AM on October 27, 2023 [2 favorites]

Autonomy may be in the eye of the beholder but I object a little to the characterization that this is the “first”. IMO that title belongs to researchers at the University of Bonn who developed MINERVA. (Bonus, robotic googly eyes.) Some of those same folks went on to lead Stanford’s Stanley project which won the DARPA Grand Challenge for autonomous driving and spawned the entire autonomous vehicle industry, for better or worse.
posted by simra at 11:14 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

I find this repugnant in so many ways.

For me, human-imitating robots are like the reanimated corpses of people who never lived.

When we finally get around to killing the last elephant, people will take their kids to 'zoos' with elephant robots that narrate bowdlerized, Disneyfied lies to cover up our species' crimes against nature.
posted by jamjam at 11:20 AM on October 27, 2023 [10 favorites]

Wow, I really think the hats, the googly eyes, and the poorly-mimed "talking" gesture all backfire, all make them much creepier, much more off-putting, than they might be if they had skipped most of that. Lipstick on the bogeyman. Of course they don't have a video demonstrating an unadorned alternative, though. BD's military robots on YouTube are cute. Right guys? We're cute.

How about a simple red light that means it is speaking and a green light that means it is listening?
posted by Western Infidels at 11:24 AM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Hey, is anyone up for prodding Boston Dynamics to program these things as service dogs? We could put together a team, have a hackathon...

sees the creepy googly eyes and gaping hand puppet maw

I withdraw my request.

(no, seriously, I've tested robots and robot arms before, I train LLM for fun, my DMs are open, Boston Dynamics call me)
posted by Soliloquy at 11:35 AM on October 27, 2023

In other robot dog news...
Marines Test Fire Robot Dog Rocket Launcher
posted by Thorzdad at 11:36 AM on October 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

Western Infidels: "How about a simple red light that means it is speaking and a green light that means it is listening?"

"I have a cue light I can use when I'm joking if you like."
posted by Rhaomi at 11:37 AM on October 27, 2023 [3 favorites]

It strikes me that the very British butler is an acceptable servant. It loves serving you just like it used to be in the good, old times. We haven't properly reckoned with classism the way we have with racism.
posted by vacapinta at 11:43 AM on October 27, 2023

I liked its little mustache.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:33 PM on October 27, 2023

Oh holy shit no! Fuck everything about this! The way it lurched at him when he interrupted it about the rock garden and ended up moving on to the "calibration wall" or whatever actually freaked me right the fuck out and gave me the screaming phantods.

That is some really deep uncanny valley nightmare fuel right there.

If I was standing there and the bot lurched at me like without even pausing to reply after I said something I probably would have instinctively kicked it and/or started running.

I'm not even being hyperbolic about this, I reacted viscerally to that movement like it was arachnophobia just watching the video and if I was standing there I'm pretty sure I would have just reacted and kicked that thing like my life depended on it.

I came here to make a joke, but I got totally distracted by how seriously creepy that was.

Anyway, hey Spot: Fold yourself exactly in half 8 times and divide Pi by zero until you halt and catch fire.
posted by loquacious at 5:00 PM on October 27, 2023 [5 favorites]

On this week's episode of "Just Because We Can, Doesn't Mean We Should" we meet ChatGPT4 (again) who's been dressed up as robot dog Spot and given a pair of googly eyes for the occasion to make it less more creepy...
posted by Insert Clever Name Here at 5:12 PM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

... oh christ, we didn't have enough trouble?
posted by Space Kitty at 5:31 PM on October 27, 2023

Also that Matt guy has suspiciously pointy teeth and I think he needs to pass a Turing Test.
posted by loquacious at 5:38 PM on October 27, 2023

....But you’re not helping. Why is that, Matt?
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:04 PM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Totally love this. A talking robot dog. C'mon folks!
posted by storybored at 7:08 PM on October 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Didn't creep me out at all. It's just a machine — and it's using language models for something that actually makes sense.

Compare this talking dog to the google video linked above where researchers have to type commands using a keyboard. It's a huge improvement.

A display with mouth and eye movements (like you find at robot service restaurants) could be more effective than the moving mechanical jaw thing, but this is just a prototype.
posted by UN at 11:56 PM on October 27, 2023

Granted, I couldn't watch the whole thing, but Spot's speech seemed largely scripted to me.

There was a small news item in the 2000s (which I occasionally seek but cannot find) about some combat robots that were being trained in London. One went missing and was found ambulating down the street a block away. This will end well.
posted by neuron at 11:32 AM on October 28, 2023

There was a small news item in the 2000s (which I occasionally seek but cannot find) about some combat robots that were being trained in London. One went missing and was found ambulating down the street a block away. This will end well.

Was there a lightning storm that day? Any chance it was saying "No disassemble!" as it wandered off?
posted by loquacious at 9:56 PM on October 29, 2023 [2 favorites]