If you watched the future-world series Black Mirror episode entitled “Metalhead” on Netflix or Amazon in 2017 (Season 4 Episode 5) you might have skeptically scoffed. Not anymore.
Computerized killer canines
In Metalhead’s post-apocalyptic world, two men and a woman on a mission find a seemingly deserted warehouse where certain treasured items are stored. Stealthily they enter the building to find the items, but their presence and noise alerts the four-legged solar powered robotic guard dog. Knowing such dogs are intelligent, powerful, and ruthless killers, the humans flee.
This dog pursues them in two ways. First, it explodes a pod shooting shrapnel that digs deep into the humans’ flesh to implant electronic tracking devices. Next, it chases them with a gun loaded with explosive bullets.
The dog selects its targets for its convenience, chasing them faster than any human can run. The first target is acquired, then shot twice with gruesome results. As the two survivors flee in a van, the dog speeds faster, jumps into the van, and blows the second man’s brains out. The rest of “Metalhead” is a gripping battle of robotic dog vs. intelligent, creative but electronically marked woman. Guess how it ends.
No longer science fiction
Is the scenario plausible, or is it just an action-adventure sci-fi thriller. Or maybe it is a movie aiming to trigger anti-robot paranoia? Let’s see.
Metalhead’s robotic dog has four legs so it can run fast. One of the legs can deploy to shoot a gun while the other three keep the beast moving forward. Having legs with articulable knees and ankles, the dog can traverse complicated and rugged terrain like a biological dog or coyote.
A robot dog like this is available today from Boston Dynamics (“BD”) and is named Spot. Except for wielding a gun, which could certainly be installed against BD’s wishes, Spot has four legs with articulating knees and ankles and can maneuver over rough territory.
Metalhead’s dog sees using built-in cameras, hears with acoustic detection, senses sub-audible vibrations, and detects warm bodies. BD’s Spot can do all these same things. It has five cameras placed in front, sides, and back. Spot can be upgraded with a thermal camera, acoustic sensors, and a laser system to measure distances to a goal location.
Spot thus has roughly the same sort of hardware as Metalhead’s dog. Spot also has similar integrated software systems. It can detect an unconscious or dead human body on the ground. It can improvise its movements to deal with unfamiliar territory, and can recover when it falls down in uneven or chaotic environments.
Like Metalhead’s dog, Spot can be outfitted with an arm and crude hand. Currently available software enables it to turn doorknobs that way.
Metalhead’s dog carried a powerful gun with software to acquire targets and hit them. People have equipped Spot robotic dogs with after-market semi-automatic rifles and the needed software to shoot them. Spot already comes with hardware and software to protect itself from injuries, including obstacle avoidance – just like Metalhead’s dog.
In short, BD’s robot dog Spot could star in a remake of Metalhead.
Autonomous search and destroy software
The Metalhead episode grips us, maybe terrifies us, with a seemingly intelligent machine that knows how to search and destroy humans — and is single-minded about doing exactly that. The robot dog is programmed with software to carry out that intention effectively while protecting itself from unnecessary harm.
Many robotic devices today are used in war, surveillance, or search and rescue, but they are piloted and directed by humans via radio controls. Military drones have long provided these services.
Artificial intelligence (AI) now empowers drones, basically aeronautical robots, to find targets. They then steer the drone to destroy them. Such lethal autonomous weapons include AI-guided missiles, fighter jets, and sentry robots that find, track, engage and blow up precisely-defined targets.
AI has proven essential in environments cluttered with electronic interference. Reportedly, in Ukraine, AI-enabled drones can overcome signal jamming to carry out their missions despite adverse conditions.
Experts recently summarized:
Military robots are autonomous machines designed to carry out tasks in the military such as reconnaissance, surveillance, and combat operations. These robots are equipped with AI algorithms to analyze data, make decisions, and complete missions with precision and efficiency.
So, the AI software for Metalhead’s dogs’ lethal mission exists today.
The diabolical mindset and toolkit
Metalhead’s dogs could be considered simply defense tools to protect valuable property or even humans against invaders. The software was designed to carry out that mission by killing the trespasser or invader. Optimistic “people are basically good” humanism can’t deny that someone somewhere will decide to program a Spot-like robot with the total-destruction option to defend persons, territory, or property. Or to deploy that option aggressively for gain.
And nothing about AI stops it from carrying out a Metalhead mission. AI is soulless amoral software. Metalhead’s robot dogs are terrifying because they are intelligent, adaptable, problem solving, relentless, unfeeling and homicidal. They use the electronic tracking shrapnel to attract their colleagues to chase and destroy the same targets, so their mission can triumph despite some robot casualties. And they can’t engage in conversation, reasoning or moral reassessment that might change their minds about their goals.
Still think the Metalhead scenario is an impossibility? Okay – but realize that AI software can be designed to identify a human by name, face, and numbers. It can track humans nearly wherever they go in the Western world as well as in China, whether by surveillance cameras, automobile tracking pods, credit card transactions, or mobile cell phone pings and internet activity.
In some ways, tracking down and destroying humans using robot dogs is old school. Today, the nefarious actor, the nutty stalker, or the self-important bureaucrat can destroy a life by smashing a person’s reputation and cutting off the person’s bank accounts, credit cards, utilities, and access to crucial websites. AI-powered internet prowling apps already can inflict many of these harms. Hackers and cyber criminals daily attack people worldwide, imposing over $9 billion in damage annually. Human impersonation deepfake videos already victimize the innocent and unwary, and more will follow.
Program a sophisticated, autonomous AI machine to target, track and destroy people electronically and financially – that’s a piece of cake. And just think, no robot dogs would even be harmed in the process.
