If anyone has watched the episode of Black Mirror that features robot dogs, you’ll understand how terrifying this news is.  According to WBUR, Massachusetts State Police is the first law enforcement agency in the country to use a robot dog named Spot from Boston Dynamics.

For the past few months, Spot has been on the job with the state’s bomb squad and used as a “mobile remote observation device” to give troopers images of suspicious devices or locations where an armed suspect might be hiding.

Using robot dogs has raised some eyebrows with civil rights groups about transparency as to how the state police will be using the robots.  Right now there are no plans to weaponize the robot dogs for the state police.  But just the fact that robot dogs CAN be weaponized has raised some issues. 

You can read more about it here.  If you want to be up at night worried about robot dogs, just watch the Black Mirror episode entitled, “Metal Head.”  Yikes!

You can see a video of Spot in action here. 

Image via MA State Police