Why is this artist teaching Boston Dynamics dogs to paint? | Hacker News Reader

Why is this artist teaching Boston Dynamics dogs to paint?

theguardian.com

38 pointsulrischa46 comments

> what’s the line between art and an ad?

indeed.

maybe she is just a fan and this isn't some elaborate marketing stunt, but man that anthropomorphisation shit creeps me out for some reason

A bit of uncanny valley in a way.

Maybe robot dog will reconsider his career path, drop out of weapons school and become an artist !

I pray to God its application doesn't get rejected from the art school.

I See what you did there

Like Carl’s Draperies :-)

https://terminator.fandom.com/wiki/Carl%27s_Draperies

Classic case of art washing a company that makes drones for Israel and probably needs some nice, soft, positive press pieces.

Do you have a source? I can't find anything about it

https://mapliberation.org/plain/entities/BostonDynamics.html

Ah, an abandoned extremist Q site. I don’t think anyone cares about what is written here.

What a cheap blanket dismissal. Regardless of the affiliation of the site (which I neither know nor care) it links to sources that can be trusted:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/percepto-to-create-fleet-of-ro... https://bostondynamics.com/products/spot/

Boston Dynamics doesn't need soft press pieces. They don't hide their military history either. They literally have Big Dog with camo bags in the lobby.

I feel like the artist is wasting an opportunity by feinting at engaging with the issues her work raises but ultimately avoiding them. She’s not being glib, but she’s being shallow and opportunistic.

I had somehow entirely forgotten about Boston Dynamics and their extremely impressive demos over the past few years.

Being reminded now, in context of generative LLM / art land, is making me dizzy.

Sanity check: after training, how much compute and storage are required to run, eg, chatGPT? Can they be loaded onto one of these dogs? I'm pretty sure the answer is yes...

LLMs vary in there resource requirements.

The best models at the moment require beefy hardware, but you could still run a handful of 7B models, at the same time, with a top of the line laptop.

With a custom build they could do something far more impressive.

My $3000 (custom) consumer desktop runs llama2 70B at ~3-6 t/s iirc. Boston Dynamics can absolutely get LLMs to run on these things.

That desktop would add a lot to the power requirements, though.

Out of curiosity I had a quick look to see if any of the pieces had made the market, one sold with Sothebys for $22.5k. There's a certain novelty to it that's quite appealing to me, but I'm surprised it went for that much as robots painting isn't a new concept.

For the kinds of people who buy art from Sotheby's, $22.5k might as well be the cost of a latte.

> Pilat frequently refers to herself as a “propaganda artist” for machines

At least she knows her role I guess

Perhaps Boston Dynamics is paying the artist to do it ?

She was the artist in residence at Boston Dynamics. It was literally her job.

Yeah I didn't read the article I was just guessing based on the title.

I prefer the painting turtle in the series “Elementary”. The paintings look like Jackson Pollock's, and the technique is easy to copy.

I mean, why not teach robots to paint?

If an elephant can create paintings of other elephants, why not?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=He7Ge7Sogrk

This might be more interesting if the robots were electric sheep.

>“You know old cat ladies?” she says to me. “It is my dream to be an old robot lady. And 50 years from now, I think it’ll be possible.”

Things like this give me an impression of "Hey, look at how cool we are fellow kids!"

More of "Hey, look at how cool we are fellow humans!"

give me a robot horse already xD

Boston dynamics are killer dogs. Why do we need this?

What evidence of that do you have?

Sorry, are you asking for the readily available pictures online of the dogs with guns mounted on them?

> are you asking for the readily available pictures online of the dogs with guns mounted on them?

I am actually, yes.

Are you referring the company Ghost Robotics? That is a different company.

Or are you referring to the art installation which mounted a paintball gun on a Boston Dynamics robot which was heavily criticised by the company itself?

Which one do you think supports the robots being "murderous"?

Besides, assuming that you are a human being, I can find plenty of images of those holding guns. Are you a murderer too then?

You're free to do your own research if you choose. I suggest starting with the BD ethics page[0] and Spot terms of sale[1].

> We will not authorize nor partner with those who wish to use our robots as weapons or autonomous targeting systems. If our products are being used for harm, we will take appropriate measures to mitigate that misuse.

[0] https://bostondynamics.com/ethics/

[1] https://bostondynamics.com/sites/default/files/inline-files/...

[2] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2022/10/bosto...

Boston Dynamics has pledged not to weaponize their robots.

“We pledge that we will not weaponize our advanced-mobility general-purpose robots or the software we develop that enables advanced robotics and we will not support others to do so.”

https://bostondynamics.com/news/general-purpose-robots-shoul...

Right, Boston Dynamics won't do it, the US military will.

Armed and armoured robot dogs don't kill people, people kill people.

There was a war called the Toyota war - [0] because Toyota Hilux pickup was the popular choice for mounting guns, among other use. Are you aware of it? If not, would you recommend Toyota now that you know?

[0] - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_War

Reply on news.ycombinator.com