Timothy Karoff/SFGATE
Something is off with tonight’s talent at Temple Nightclub. Blue lights obscure the DJ’s face, but from the back of the crowded dance floor, you can make out an uncanny silhouette of an almost impossibly thin neck and unusually small, square head.
The DJ’s arms move in smooth, steady arcs. Although the transitions are precise, the fist pumps are almost out of time with the propulsive tech-house beats blaring out of the speakers.
If those motions sound robotic, they are. Phantom is the first humanoid robot developed by San Francisco-based startup Foundation Robotics Labs. In the near future, the company’s line of humanoid robots could manufacture cars, rove warehouses, and even be deployed by the U.S. military to combat zones. But on Friday, Phantom made his first public appearance — not as a weapon of war but as a DJ. (Phantom’s creators are emphatic that the robot is a “he.”)
Co-founder Mike LeBlanc said that the company’s customers include auto manufacturers, warehouses and logistics firms, as well as the Department of Defense. That makes it hard not to see a double meaning in the generic finger gun gestures Phantom performs on stage.
LeBlanc, who served 13 years in the Marines, said that while the company’s competitors promised to never place robots in military roles, Foundation is the only American robotics company building humanoids for national defense. Famed robotics company Boston Dynamics has prohibited the “weaponization” of its general purpose bots and has made a pledge with five other leading robotics companies to never use their technology as weapons.
“We’re the opposite,” LeBlanc told SFGATE. “We believe that humanoids are going to be critical to the future of warfare. Hence, designing robots that are bigger, faster, stronger.” (Currently, the company’s robots are not in combat, and mainly help with the maintenance and refueling of aircraft in remote areas for the military, according to LeBlanc.)
This DJ set, then, is a bit of cultural diplomacy for the company — a demonstration that a literal war machine can be fun, too. “We are not trying to apologize for the strength of robots,” LeBlanc said. “So for us, this is the perfect unveiling because this is what our robot is. This is a fun moment.”
By that metric, Phantom’s debut DJ set was a success. On Friday, the robot gave a 30-minute set on the main stage at Temple Nightclub to cap off an event billed as a “Tech GigaParty” — part AI trade expo, part networking event, part club night. He received a warm welcome from San Francisco.
As Phantom takes the stage at 9:45 p.m. following a human DJ, LeBlanc’s fellow co-founder, Sankaet Pathak, stands beside him holding a microphone. A man wearing a ruby-colored, “Big Lebowski” robe yells “Bot DJ!” at the stage from below.
Pathak asks the dance floor, which is crowded with techies in vests, chino pants and blouses, to raise their hands if they like robots. The audience hoots; hands go up. “I like robots,” a guy near me murmurs, maybe to himself.
A few quiet minutes pass. “It’s time for the robot rager,” someone unseen declares from onstage. “Robot rager!” tech-Lebowski yells in agreement. And the robot rager begins.
Standing over the room, Phantom is completely expressionless. He has to be, since his face is a round-edged, featureless black box. He’s shaped like a human: broad shoulders, a torso, a narrow midriff and arms with elbow joints. At times, Phantom raises his hand straight up and down, silvery digits upright, thumb askew.
Phantom’s motions are uncannily smooth. A human DJ would’ve bounced up and down, jabbing at buttons on the DJ board. Phantom’s head stays perfectly level, and instead of jerking his hands, he brings them down in perfectly timed arcs. Phantom doesn’t pick tracks out in real time, Pathak explains to me. Humans selected the music in advance, and Foundation Robotics Lab spent a few weeks training the robot’s every motion.
“I don’t think it’s a stretch to say this is probably the best DJ set you will have ever seen in your life,” Pathak says.
I have to press. “The best I’ll have ever seen in my life?”
“I’m pretty sure of that,” he says. Pathak explains that the DJ set will tell the story of human history, from the distant past to the future, with the help of AI-generated visuals.
(I ask Pathak if he likes electronic music. He replies that yes, he enjoys Daft Punk and Skrillex.)
On the spectrum from frat house DJ to A. G. Cook, Phantom falls somewhere in the middle. He plays at least two Gesaffelstein tracks and succeeds in moving bodies near the front of the room, where tech-Lebowski and company bust what can best be described as Burning Man dance moves. The back of the room is a bit dead, which is no fault of Phantom’s. It is a tech party, after all.
One young woman in a blue lanyard wears an Apple Vision Pro around her neck. I watch a man in a suit approach her and strike up a conversation, presumably flirtatious. When I look again, they already have their phones out. Not exchanging numbers, just adding each other on LinkedIn.
“I think you’re going to be seeing a lot more of Phantom with music,” LeBlanc told me near the end of our interview. Foundation Robotics Lab has been fielding requests for the robot’s appearances, and the company is considering hiring an agent to handle them all. “People just love this thing,” he said.
I recall this exchange as I watch a sharply dressed couple sway their hips in front of the DJ stand, which bears a car-length LED display of Foundation’s logo. Call it a military-industrial middle school dance.
Thought experiment: If one of the military drones Barack Obama deployed during his presidency held a Bushwick Boiler Room, would you line up to dance? OK, OK, OK: But what if the drone was really, really cool?
Everyone agrees that the art vs. the artist debate is tired. But we’re not talking about Kanye West’s antisemitic comments. There’s a big difference here: Kanye is a musician with a flawed moral character; Phantom is a weapon with a side hustle as a DJ. His music career essentially constitutes a goodwill campaign for a morally dubious project.
Boston Dynamics, in its pledge, raised concerns about military use of robots: “We believe that adding weapons to robots that are remotely or autonomously operated, widely available to the public, and capable of navigating to previously inaccessible locations where people live and work, raises new risks of harm and serious ethical issues.”
Source : https://www.sfgate.com/sf-culture/article/sf-hottest-dj-war-machine-20136704.php
