An Indian professor has sparked ridicule after falsely suggesting a Chinese-made robot dog displayed at a major AI summit in New Delhi was developed by her university.
The silver mechanical dog — a model sold by Chinese startup Unitree — appeared at a booth run by the private Galgotias University at this week’s AI Impact Summit.
Following online uproar over the professor’s claim in a televised interview on Tuesday, Galgotias said that while it did not build the machine, “what we are building are minds that will soon design, engineer, and manufacture such technologies”.
“You need to meet Orion,” the professor, Neha Singh, told an Indian TV reporter as the dog performed tricks such as waving at the camera and springing up on its hind legs.
“This has been developed by the centres of excellence at the Galgotias University,” Singh said, touting the institution’s investments in artificial intelligence technology.
“As you can see, it can take all shapes and sizes… it’s quite naughty also,” she said.
In a statement posted on social media platform X, the university said: “Let us be clear — Galgotias has not built this robodog, neither have we claimed.”
The “recently acquired” Unitree robodog is a “classroom in motion” and “our students are experimenting with it, testing its limits”, it said.
Under fire for her comments, Singh told reporters on Wednesday that “things may not have been expressed clearly”.
“I did not communicate it properly,” said Singh, a professor of communications.
Source: Insider Paper
