This funny but terrifying parody video about Boston Dynamics shows a robot learning to fight back against humans
- A video of a "Bosstown Dynamics" robot - a parody of robotics company Boston Dynamics - fighting back after being bullied went viral over the weekend.
- The video is a light-hearted parody by a well-known studio that posts its videos on YouTube.
- The video is funny, but it also opens up the conversation of what happens when artificial intelligence becomes sentient.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
A video went up over the weekend on the Corridor YouTube channel showing a robot that fights back after suffering through some rather mean - and even violent - tests by a "Bosstown Dynamic" team, which parodies the robotics company Boston Dynamics.
Check it out for yourself:
As of June 17, the video has racked up 4.5 million views.
The "Bosstown Dynamics" robot is shoved, beaten down with a folding chair, has boxes thrown at its head, gets hit by a hockey stick, and even shot by the fake testers. You can't help but feel for the robot, a mass of gears and machinery that makes endearing mechanical noises, and moves in an eerily human way.
Then, the robot seemingly has enough and starts to retaliate. At one point, the robot even holds its testers hostage with the very gun that was used to shoot it. When the robot fights back, you might not know whether to cheer and laugh for it, or feel slightly terrified that robots could deviate from their programming, become sentient, and fight back.
Corridor's video is a light-hearted parody that's not designed to induce any particular feeling towards robots. In a tweet, Corridor Digital said the video is a tribute to Boston Dynamics and the work it does. Boston Dynamics did not respond to Corridor's tweet, and hasn't replied to Business Insider's question about what it thinks of the video.
For reference, here's a real video from the Boston Dynamics YouTube channel showing the company's Atlas robot taking a leisurely jog:
Corridor Digital, the studio behind the Corridor YouTube channel, is known for making stunt parodies, often using computer generated imagery (CGI). It's the studio behind the live-action video of the "Grand Theft Auto" video game (34 million views) and "The World's Longest Lightsaber" video (54 million views), where the Corridor team wields such a long - fake - lightsaber that they accidentally destroy an aircraft - again, fake - in the sky.