If you’ve seen the Will Smith movie I, Robot, you may remember that a company’s ubiquitous helper bots go psycho and turn the tables on their human charges.
This is what some experts fear regarding the import of Chinese robots, like the offerings from Unitree Robotics and other companies. Unitree’s faceless H1 is bipedal and can run up to 11 miles an hour, scale steps and perform all manner of tasks.
However, the New York Post reports Jacob Helberg, who sits on the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission — the folks who convinced Congress to force a sale or ban of TikTok over security concerns — is warning of a potential nightmare scenario if bots like these become commonplace in the U.S.
“I think we’re 12 months away from a ChatGPT moment where the world goes from being asleep to awake on this issue,” he tells the paper.
“They can strangle someone in their sleep. They can punch a data center and inflict physical harm and destruction of property,” he warns.
Helberg adds, “Ultimately, if TikTok was a Chinese spy balloon in your pocket, Chinese drones [the robots] on US soil are poised to be a Chinese PLA stealth army on our land. And we can’t allow that to happen.”
However, Paul Rosenzweig, a former Homeland Security deputy assistant secretary, thinks the fears are overblown and tells the Post an I, Robot-like nightmare is “a long way away.”
“There are lots of things in China to worry about, like our competition in AI and their access to American tech and data. … But this kind of stuff is just a distraction from much more significant problems,” he insisted.
That said, China is pushing for “mass production” of humanoid robots by 2025, seeking to compete with offerings from Elon Musk‘s Tesla and Boston Dynamics.