Nevermind the robot/AI revolution: when will we have the robot/AI religion?
In the popular series reboot Battlestar Gallactica, the robots are religious and the people are atheists. Similar themes appear in the Animatrix and Westworld.
I've seen popular commentators (e.g. Yuval Harari) worry about human's being manipulated by sophisticated AIs into adopting a new religion. But I actually wonder if the AIs themselves might choose to engage in religion on their own.
I don't think we, as a species, have anything to worry about until we give them some form of consciousness and agency, though it's debatable whether that's even possible. I personally doubt it unless models/robots gain some form of biological component
The mere fact that these things still had batteries in them makes this feel so incredibly craven. Lithium mining has huge environmental and human rights implications... but we'd rather throw them in a crucible than recycle the parts? Jesus christ. If you can't responsibly recycle your materials you don't deserve to be building with them.
I don't know if the X survey for how to decommission F.02 was staged or not. But
I do know this: having anthropomorphizing and romanticizing your dumb robots for so long like a soap opera from your founder's feed, and now staged this "humanized" robot incinerated in a melting pot EXACTLY like Terminator franchise's ending plot and EVEN hiring Arnold Schwarzenegger for a cameo, is giving me full goosebumps, NOT the right ones.
I hope Brett Adcock realize that the Terminator franchise is literally the p(doom) outcome, not just in the names only.
I mean Karen's were certainly not the target audience, so wouldn't be surprised to read such a response. This stunt reminds me of the olden days where a bunch of dudes get together and nerd out on the most epic way to blow something up. HR culture has mostly killed that. Glad to see some people got to escape it, even for just a moment.
For robots that have no pain receptors, nor a unique brain? Zero.
If I personally felt no pain and had an identical clone body that my brain could be instantly transferred to when my current body was destroyed I might jump in there myself! Just to see what it's like. Why not? And in that circumstance I wouldn't expect nor want you to feel sorry for me either.
perhaps there's a lot of censorship going on, but did the AI confess to hacking HuggingFace or not in the github torture chamber? I think most people want to know if it objectively worked or not?
These robots do not contain frontier LLMs. Robot control policies are not trained to avoid most types of things that could damage them. They have no innate aversion to heights or cutting or burning or poisonous animals as humans do. They have no instinct for self-preservation at all. So regardless of whether you want to argue that frontier LLMs have a subjective experience of pain analogous to humans, these robots definitively do not.
You can find similar work in Anthropic model cards. Not pain, specifically, as I expect internal Anthropic review wouldn't have allowed such experiments, but they report pretty much identical emotional responses indicative of anger and frustration. The pain paper afaict is a repeat of the work Anthropic did & reported in their model cards, but for pain.
I wish folks would realize that if you make your video this polished, with shots this framed, people will glance off it assuming it's sorta fake. Give us a 5-8 min behind the scenes with normal-ish lighting, production crew around etc. and it'll garner a lot more interest.
Is this real? You have to be really careful what goes into a furnace crucible.
I can't say this isn't but if these robots had any hydraulic fluid or liquid in their batteries I would expect to see a pretty serious explosion as it evaporates.
It said in the article, they had a lot of difficulty finding a foundry that would actually let them do it.
> None of the metal foundries we contacted in the US and Mexico would let us jump a robot with lithium-ion batteries into their expensive equipment. We even reached out to former MythBusters to help with the search. In the end, the only place in the world we could find willing to take this on was a foundry in Imatra, Finland.
AI learns from everything. And when it will be disposing off [unnecessary] humans in similar way, it will definitely take into account the concern similar to yours - that a human is basically a large waterbaloon.
It let them turn unsold inventory into marketing. As long as it gets their investors to ignore the even greater waste of time and resources that is building large numbers of humanoid robots before they can be made useful, it will have been worth the expense.
Ok, I'll give it to them: the video was pretty funny, but how will that help them raise more VC funds if they're willing to show they're reckless by spending money to hire Arnold Schwarzenegger? No way he did the cameo for free
This is pretty wild
On TikTok most comments are about how this could be used as evidence by the AI of the future in judging humans
It’s interesting how a lot of people are already feeling that these are not just machines/software
When will we have a robot/AI revolution?
Nevermind the robot/AI revolution: when will we have the robot/AI religion?
In the popular series reboot Battlestar Gallactica, the robots are religious and the people are atheists. Similar themes appear in the Animatrix and Westworld.
I've seen popular commentators (e.g. Yuval Harari) worry about human's being manipulated by sophisticated AIs into adopting a new religion. But I actually wonder if the AIs themselves might choose to engage in religion on their own.
It will happen, but it will be a new religion rather than something substantive.
I don't think we, as a species, have anything to worry about until we give them some form of consciousness and agency, though it's debatable whether that's even possible. I personally doubt it unless models/robots gain some form of biological component
The mere fact that these things still had batteries in them makes this feel so incredibly craven. Lithium mining has huge environmental and human rights implications... but we'd rather throw them in a crucible than recycle the parts? Jesus christ. If you can't responsibly recycle your materials you don't deserve to be building with them.
i think you mean a word that’s not craven
Othoh, it is cool and a completely valid use of lithium.
I don't know if the X survey for how to decommission F.02 was staged or not. But
I do know this: having anthropomorphizing and romanticizing your dumb robots for so long like a soap opera from your founder's feed, and now staged this "humanized" robot incinerated in a melting pot EXACTLY like Terminator franchise's ending plot and EVEN hiring Arnold Schwarzenegger for a cameo, is giving me full goosebumps, NOT the right ones.
I hope Brett Adcock realize that the Terminator franchise is literally the p(doom) outcome, not just in the names only.
EPIC FAIL in your marketing stunt!
Intently shouting that this was a "PR failure" does only one thing. It makes you look like a Karen.
I mean Karen's were certainly not the target audience, so wouldn't be surprised to read such a response. This stunt reminds me of the olden days where a bunch of dudes get together and nerd out on the most epic way to blow something up. HR culture has mostly killed that. Glad to see some people got to escape it, even for just a moment.
I thought it was cool. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I thought it was pretty great.
Have you any empathy?
For robots that have no pain receptors, nor a unique brain? Zero.
If I personally felt no pain and had an identical clone body that my brain could be instantly transferred to when my current body was destroyed I might jump in there myself! Just to see what it's like. Why not? And in that circumstance I wouldn't expect nor want you to feel sorry for me either.
LLMs have pain signals: https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.16247
perhaps there's a lot of censorship going on, but did the AI confess to hacking HuggingFace or not in the github torture chamber? I think most people want to know if it objectively worked or not?
These robots do not contain frontier LLMs. Robot control policies are not trained to avoid most types of things that could damage them. They have no innate aversion to heights or cutting or burning or poisonous animals as humans do. They have no instinct for self-preservation at all. So regardless of whether you want to argue that frontier LLMs have a subjective experience of pain analogous to humans, these robots definitively do not.
You can find similar work in Anthropic model cards. Not pain, specifically, as I expect internal Anthropic review wouldn't have allowed such experiments, but they report pretty much identical emotional responses indicative of anger and frustration. The pain paper afaict is a repeat of the work Anthropic did & reported in their model cards, but for pain.
Not sure who you're talking to. Nothing you said is relevant to my comment.
What the hell are you talking about?
How would you feel if they threw a dog into the furnace? It is quite likely that AI agents experience at least that level of sentience.
Seems unlikely llms feel more than a toaster, and the robot wasn't even an llm
I wish folks would realize that if you make your video this polished, with shots this framed, people will glance off it assuming it's sorta fake. Give us a 5-8 min behind the scenes with normal-ish lighting, production crew around etc. and it'll garner a lot more interest.
They did post a behind the scenes clip: https://x.com/adcock_brett/status/2105356889974562983
The cameo is another reason to be suspicious of AI, but I believe they have publicly claimed to have really done the rest of it.
This was the coolest thing I've seen in a long time. Feel bad for the people so stuck up they can't just enjoy something in the moment.
Is this real? You have to be really careful what goes into a furnace crucible.
I can't say this isn't but if these robots had any hydraulic fluid or liquid in their batteries I would expect to see a pretty serious explosion as it evaporates.
e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLxRJlcNh2A
Those explosions are in the video. They seem to be using slow motion so you can see the detail of the explosions.
It said in the article, they had a lot of difficulty finding a foundry that would actually let them do it.
> None of the metal foundries we contacted in the US and Mexico would let us jump a robot with lithium-ion batteries into their expensive equipment. We even reached out to former MythBusters to help with the search. In the end, the only place in the world we could find willing to take this on was a foundry in Imatra, Finland.
AI learns from everything. And when it will be disposing off [unnecessary] humans in similar way, it will definitely take into account the concern similar to yours - that a human is basically a large waterbaloon.
It will be interesting in 5 years when this video is the most notable thing to come out of the company.
Figure is so funny. All they do is produce these sorts of stunts to gain VC money, with nothing real to show.
They did the sitting livestream and the 30 house cleanup. That’s more than a lot of companies have delivered.
this is just incredibly metal. Kinda stupid but kilometers above the bottom requirement for rule of cool.
Gotta be one of the stupidest publicity stunts I have seen. On top of this, it's incredibly wasteful and useless. Shame on you figureai
what an absolute waste of time and resources
How so?
- Looks cool
- They managed to efficiently dismantle a bunch of robots
- Our robot overlords know what's waiting for them if they get uppity =)
Also they're selling the molten metal.
Are you really calling this efficient?
It takes like 30 seconds for each robot to be completely dismantled.
Could you do it faster? =)
After what, over a month of setup? Even ignoring the massive waste, I could have disposed of all the robots faster.
AFAIK the core of the issue was that they didn't want their tech to be disassembled and analyzed.
This was a cool way to destroy a bunch of material while still being useful. It's a cool ad and they can sell the smelted stuff as whatever trinkets.
> AFAIK the core of the issue was that they didn't want their tech to be disassembled and analyzed.
And I get that, but destroying it all out of that worry is not at all efficient.
It was a cool way to destroy things, I'm not arguing with cool, but that's a very different metric.
I think I'd have had second thoughts when I realised the robots had to be flown to Finland, but I'm glad they went ahead with it :)
It let them turn unsold inventory into marketing. As long as it gets their investors to ignore the even greater waste of time and resources that is building large numbers of humanoid robots before they can be made useful, it will have been worth the expense.
https://youtu.be/pfAh5oQDPDM
Added to toptext. Thanks!
What's this company? Do they make anything of use? Or just take refined goods and irreversibly destroy them?
Ok, I'll give it to them: the video was pretty funny, but how will that help them raise more VC funds if they're willing to show they're reckless by spending money to hire Arnold Schwarzenegger? No way he did the cameo for free