ICE plan to buy robot dogs spurs protest from hundreds of Boston Dynamics employees
Hundreds of employees at the US robotics firm Boston Dynamics signed a petition calling for executives to halt a sale of the company’s robot dogs to US Immigration and Customs Enforcement—but executives stood by the deal, while saying the robots would not be weaponized.
On September 25, the Department of Homeland Security contract awarded $1.3 million to a Connecticut company called Radeco to provide ICE with modified versions of Boston Dynamics’ quadruped robots. But Boston Dynamics workers sent the petition letter with more than 300 signatures—half of them anonymous—to the company’s executives in early September and shared copies with The Boston Globe and WBUR public radio station .
“Many of us have gotten messages from friends and family, asking us in disbelief and horror if this news is true, and how we can live with ourselves if it is,” according to the petition. “The risk for Boston Dynamics is simply too great to continue with this deal.”
Read full article
Comments
News is gathered automatically from public robotics & AI feeds on a schedule.
Related
Anthropic is burning gas to feed the AI boom
As it prepares to go public, Anthropic's S-1 filing makes generative AI's methane dependency glaringly obvious. "Competition for access to electrical supply and data center locations with adequate power availability is intense." In documents filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission Monda
Why Anthropic’s IPO Prospectus Is Missing So Many Key Figures
Anthropic’s S-1 filing is hundreds of pages long—and it leaves out quite a few financial details. “Anthropic owes investors more information,” one analyst tells WIRED.
Apple releases iOS and macOS 27.2 with new Siri AI features, new Music logo
Included is the ability to limit which applications Siri can directly access.
IEEE Xplore Digital Library Adds AI Assistant
IEEE recently released the IEEE Xplore AI Research Suite , built on the full text of millions of peer-reviewed publications in the IEEE Xplore Digital Library . The library offers full-text access to IEEE standards , journals, magazines, conference proceedings, and more. Researchers who use the AI s
Will the real Anthropic please stand up
This story originally appeared in The Algorithm, our weekly newsletter on AI. To get stories like this in your inbox first, sign up here. After weeks of frenzied speculation, Anthropic has filed its IPO prospectus. The 335-page document (100 pages or so are focused on risks) lays out the company’s u
The RealReal won’t let AI agents hog designer clothing
The RealReal, a secondhand luxury fashion consignment retailer, said it's updating its bot defense system, effectively making it harder for AI agents to shop on its site. The change comes days after The Verge reported that an AI agent could be used to take advantage of The RealReal's item reserve sy