Inside Dewar's cavernous whisky warehouses, man's best mechanical friend--a Boston Dynamics robot dog with an ethanol sensor for a nose--is on the hunt for leaky barrels. Wooden barrels are what make the magic happen in your favorite bottle of whisky . At Bacardi Limited, the world's largest privately held spirits company, barrel leakage is a massive headache. Consider the company's Dewar's blended Scotch whisky brand (just one of the dozens it owns). Most of the time, Dewar's will have over 100 warehouses full of aging barrels of whisky, 25,000 casks in each one.

The Mexican city of Guadalupe, which will host portions of the 2026 World Cup, recently showed off four new robot dogs that will help provide security during matches at BBVA Stadium. The K9-X "robodogs" will help officers patrol during the 2026 World Cup this summer. Authorities in Mexico's Guadalupe, Nuevo León, this week unveiled four robot dogs that will be part of the security devices at BBVA Stadium, one of the three Mexican venues of the 2026 World Cup . The robot dogs are not armed, but each unit incorporates video cameras, night vision, and communication systems that are used to issue warnings or instructions. Its function is to deter illegal activity, detect unusual behavior, identify suspicious objects, control crowds, and immediately alert law enforcement when the system deems necessary. Robot dogs operate semi-autonomously: They do not make decisions or execute movements on their own.

Technology AI Robot dog with Elon Musk's head poops out AI generated art The dystopian art installation features billionaires and Silicon Valley's elite. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Robot dogs are already a bit creepy. But slap on a hyper-realistic image of a tech billionaire's face and have them literally crap out a piece of AI-generated art and you're left with something that would make producers shudder. In, the event space is crowded with six flesh-toned robotic dogs, each bearing a detached, photorealistic head of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Andy Warhol, Pablo Picasso, or the installation's creator, digital artist Beeple .

Anthropic's Claude Takes Control of a Robot Dog Anthropic believes AI models will increasingly reach into the physical world. To understand where things are headed, it asked Claude to program a quadruped. As more robots start showing up in warehouses, offices, and even people's homes, the idea of large language models hacking into complex systems sounds like the stuff of sci-fi nightmares. So, naturally, Anthropic researchers were eager to see what would happen if Claude tried taking control of a robot--in this case, a robot dog. In a new study, Anthropic researchers found that Claude was able to automate much of the work involved in programming a robot and getting it to do physical tasks.

BEIJING/SINGAPORE - Chinese state-owned defense giant Norinco in February unveiled a military vehicle capable of autonomously conducting combat-support operations at 50 kilometers per hour. It was powered by DeepSeek, the company whose artificial intelligence model is the pride of China's tech sector. The Norinco P60's release was touted by Communist Party officials in press statements as an early showcase of how Beijing is using DeepSeek and AI to catch up in its arms race with the United States, at a time when leaders in both countries have urged their militaries to prepare for conflict. A review of hundreds of research papers, patents and procurement records gives a snapshot of the systematic effort by Beijing to harness AI for military advantage. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.

Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. When humans eventually set foot on Mars, they may have a four-legged companion by their side. But the dog accompanying them won't be a canine at all, but a quadruped robot designed to gather samples and keep astronauts on the Red Planet from twisting an ankle. Built with autonomous capability, it will be capable of operating independently of humans. Put another way, the Mars dog will walk off-leash.

It might not be able to fetch the paper for you, but a robot dog might soon bring you your parcels. Milo, the four-legged delivery bot, has started taking to the streets of Yorkshire as part of a new trial for delivery firm Evri. The robot dog has been trained to jump in and out of the van, navigate to customers' doors, and drop off packages without any assistance. Milo will be joining Evri's regular drivers over the next fortnight as they make their rounds in Morley, Leeds. Evri hopes that these robot co-pilots will take the strain off their human counterparts, freeing up more time for complex jobs like parking or navigating.

In a world where human boxers are at risk of dangerous injuries, we may have a glimpse of what the fight of the future could look like. New footage shows the world's first humanoid robot boxing tournament, which took place over the weekend in Hangzhou, east China. In the bizarre clip, two lifesize robots wearing gloves and protective headgear fight each other in a ring as a human officiator looks on. Each fighter robot weighs about 35kg and is 4.3ft (132cm) tall – roughly the height of the average eight-year-old child. Both the bots initially have trouble seeing exactly where their opponent is before successfully trading punches and kicks, to the delight of a baying crowd.

On a misty Saturday afternoon in Shenzhen's Central Park, a gaggle of teenage girls are sheltering from the drizzle under a concrete canopy. With their bags of crisps piled high in front of them, they crowd around a couple of smartphones to sing along to Mandopop ballads. The sound of their laughter rings out across the surrounding lawn – until it is pierced by a mechanical buzzing sound. A few metres away from the impromptu karaoke session is an "airdrop cabinet", one of more than 40 in Shenzhen that is operated by Meituan, China's biggest food delivery platform. Hungry park-goers can order anything from rice noodles to Subway sandwiches to bubble tea.

Black Mirror is more than science fiction – its stories about modernity have become akin to science folklore, shaping our collective view of technology and the future. Each new innovation gets an allegory: smartphones as tools for a new age caste system, robot dogs as overzealous human hunters, drones as a murderous swarm, artificial intelligence as new age necromancy, virtual reality and brain chips as seizure-inducing nightmares, to name a few. It is a must-watch, but must we take it so seriously? Black Mirror fails to consistently explore the duality of technology and our reactions to it. It is a critical deficit.