Claude AI Takes Control of Robot Dog, Raising Safety Alarms

"For example, whether it was identifying correct algorithms, choosing API calls, or something else more substantive." Some researchers warn that using AI to interact with robots increases the potential for misuse and mishap. "Project Fetch demonstrates that LLMs can now instruct robots on tasks," says George Pappas, a computer scientist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies these risks. Pappas notes, however, that today's AI models need to access other programs for tasks like sensing and navigation in order to take physical action.

His group developed a system called RoboGuard that limits the ways AI models can get a robot to misbehave by imposing specific rules on the robot's behavior. Pappas adds that an AI system's ability to control a robot will only really take off when it is able to learn by interacting with the physical world. "When you mix rich data with embodied feedback," he says, "you're building systems that cannot just imagine the world, but participate in it." This could make robots a lot more useful--and, if Anthropic is to be believed, a lot more risky too.