The robot is here. It’s time to take this very seriously from a criminal perspective.
If these robots cost $20,000-30,000, then (all things equal) as a criminal I need to rob you of $20,001-$30,001 to make my investment worthwhile. If I can steal your Tesla car, or another one of your Tesla bots, then it’s an easy win for me.
If I can program one to grab your child and demand a ransom, then that’s an easy win. If I can use one to enter your house and hold you at gunpoint, easy win.
If I can program one to enter your corporate office and threaten to detonate, or kidnap your CEO, or steal his/her phone, super easy win. It’s the same thing as ransomware, except now it’s a physical bot that can do lots of physical things to get that much closer to the victim.
When I look up “robot self defense” on YouTube, all I see are Corridor Digital comedies. Nobody seems to be thinking about this.
We have to assume criminals are thinking about the massive windfalls like these.
The questions in my mind are 1) what can (or should) I do if this thing grabs me or my child? 2) How fast do I have to go to outrun it? 3) How well can it conceal a weapon?
These are the tests I’d be doing asap.
Here’s another problem. Let’s assume I acquire 10 robots from Tesla to test how a civilian can fight one off, attack one, disable it, etc. How long before pro-AI-rights groups flag these videos for robot abuse? How long before YouTube bans me? Would they shadow-ban such information fearing it might incite anger in AI, or an arms race? Again, we should probably be at least testing this.