Once again, we humans are actively facilitating our own demise by creating something that we probably shouldn’t.
Usually, that participation involves the use of artificial intelligence and/or robots.
The latest creation that will probably be used at some point to end humanity is a robot dog with a flamethrower built into it called Thermonator.
Thermonator is currently being sold by Throwflame, a company that already sells another bad idea: a flamethrower attachment for drones.
“Thermonator is the first-ever flamethrower-wielding robot dog,” the company boasts on its website. “This quadruped is coupled with the ARC Flamethrower to deliver on-demand fire anywhere!”
Gizmodo reports, “Because of the strict EULA that Boston Dynamics enforces with Spot, Thermonator instead appears to be built on the Unitree Go1 quadruped robot, which is much smaller and lighter than Spot, but still includes a variety of cameras and sensors onboard allowing it some level of autonomous navigation when it’s not being operated from a wireless controller.”
Interested? Well, you’ll have to wait a little bit to receive your very own flame-throwing robot dog because Throwflame is currently only taking names for a waiting list until “this product becomes available.”
They also don’t list a price for you own little piece of the impending apocalypse, but Gizmodo figures the robot dog by itself costs between $2,700 and $3,500 and the ARC Flamethrower runs between $699 and $899, so you are probably looking at somewhere around $4,000 to $5,000.
Between giant flying robot spiders, intelligent autonomous robots that can build larger versions of themselves, robots that detect if they’ve been stabbed and then self-heal, and drones that can drop robot dogs armed with assault rifles anywhere they want, was adding a flamethrower to a robot dog really something we should be doing?
Oh well, since there is a 50 percent chance we are all living in a simulation and don’t even realize it, it probably doesn’t even matter.