Dimensional Offered $20 an Hour to Walk Robot Dogs

Dimensional offered workers $20 an hour to guide robot dogs through San Francisco, Fox Business reports, citing The New York Times. The since deleted job listing advertised shifts lasting four to six hours, with no robotics experience required and paid training included.

Workers controlled the robots while onboard cameras and sensors collected information about their surroundings. The equipment weighed about 33 pounds and sometimes had to be carried back after overheating or stopping.

The robots cost about $2,000 each and came from Unitree Robotics. Dimensional is developing an operating system with public source code that lets AI agents control robots, but founder Stash Pomichter said the experiment showed "agents are still very bad at controlling hardware" and that humans are still needed in the loop.