These Robot Soldiers Are Getting Downright Terrifying

Waves1234 via Wikimedia Commons Aerial drones have become a startlingly common sight on the battlefield. Ukraine, for instance, has been deploying a record number of them as global demand for the often inexpensive and relatively simple to launch devices surges. But US-based firms are thinking far ahead, envisioning a dystopian “Terminator”-inspired future in which humanoid robot soldiers go to war on behalf of their flesh-and-blood counterparts. Case in point, San Francisco-based tech company Foundation recently signed a $24 million Pentagon contract to do just that, as the Wall Street Journal reports. While the company’s flagship Phantom MK1 robot, an unsettling matte black apparition, doesn’t appear to be ready to hold a gun or run into open fire on its own any time soon, the Eric Trump-backed company is far from ruling out the idea. When the tech progresses enough to allow robots to reason and adapt to their behavior, “instead of dropping a bomb in a building, you can send humanoids to actually walk inside that building and go directly to the target,” Foundation CEO Sankaet Pathak told the WSJ. In an interview last year, Pathak wasn’t willing to rule out the possibility of handing one of its robots a gun, either. “If you’re first body in and you’re docile, then the enemies are not going to expose themselves,” he said at the time. “So you have to be first body and deadly.” “If the US military had 100,000 robots that they could just demonstrate working, it would, by and large, end a lot of wars before they start,” Pathak added at the time. So far, the company has rolled out around ten robots, according to the executive, including “deployments with the Air Force.” Its robots, which can carry up to 80 pounds, have even helped move larger objects in Ukraine, per Pathak. Foundation is also “gearing up to start building a lot more” of its robots, while using AI and reinforcement learning to teach them new tasks. In the long run, however, the company appears to be far more interested in colonizing other planets. According to the company’s website, its “master plan” involves building “technologies that make life self-sustaining on Earth and beyond,” closely echoing SpaceX CEO Elon Musk’s ambitions. But before it can get anywhere even remotely close to that, the company has a lot to prove. For one, beyond major technological hurdles still to overcome, it has to convince modern society that deploying deadly humanoid robots doesn’t cross a moral line — which is far easier said than done. More on humanoid robots: Dozens of Humanoid Robots Gather for a Protest, Marching and Waving Signs