At some stage down the line, it seems likely that robots, or at least artificial intelligence, will find a way to outsmart us humans.

Look, outsmarting us isn’t exactly going to be an uphill struggle.

Elon Musk has already warned about the potential for AI to spiral out of control if in the wrong hands, and we’ve joked about Boston Dynamics’ robots and their march towards eventually enslaving us and total domination.

I guess there’s good news on that front, because Boston Dynamics’ Spot isn’t yet in a position to do that. Over to the Verge:

According to documents obtained by OneZero detailing a Spot trial with the Massachusetts State Police, the robot can fall short in real-world scenarios and even fail to work entirely…

Across 28 pages of emails OneZero obtained, the Spot unit used by the bomb squad fell over “for no apparent reason,” got spooked by tall grass, and went into “sit” mode when it was instructed to approach a suspicious briefcase during a live threat situation, among other issues.

Bad Spot!

You can’t blame folks for being a little wary of Spot when you watch the promo video:

It’s probably worth mentioning that Spot does require some guidance by human operators, which may have been the point at which the errors occurred during the Massachusetts State Police trial.

Still, we’re slowing the countdown clock until subjugation:

The Spot’s early and bumpy rollout in real-life scenarios like this is just further proof that these robots are far from taking over the world, let alone mass-replacing human jobs. In many cases, the Spot robot is augmenting jobs of existing humans, like being a bomb squad member, and providing a useful way to capture video and collect data in sensitive or dangerous environments.

It’s a far cry from the murderous Black Mirror bot, and certainly not as spooky as its impressive motor function demos make it seem.

Congrats, humanity – we are free to continue wrecking the planet, and each other, for a few more years.

Surely the machines can’t do any worse than we’ve done?

[source:verge]