Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos Had Too Much Fun Inside This 13-Foot-Tall Robot Exosuit

A reality show celebrity is the US president, global warming is gradually causing catastrophic changes to our world, and artificial intelligence is at most a decade away from achieving singularity. If that wasn¡¯t already evidence of us living in the flashbacks of a post-apocalyptic novel, here¡¯s a president of a major corporation piloting his very own mech suit.

Jeff Bezos in the pilot seat of the Method 2 - Bezos/Twitter

To watch him on stage, encapsulated in a 13-foot-tall robotic exosuit, Jeff Bezos looks far too joyous to be ignored. It¡¯s almost sinister, the way he grins as those gigantic metal arms practice their rebel-tossing moves.

@JeffBezos "Why do I feel so much like #sigourneyweaver ?" @amazon #MARS2017 #openpodbaydoorspic.twitter.com/HRRzmQtZbh

¡ª Caleb Harper (@calebgrowsfood) March 20, 2017

The Amazon CEO gleefully tweeted the above photo of him piloting the oversized metal suit from the company¡¯s annual robotics conference on Monday. ¡°I just got to pilot an awesome (and huge) robot thanks to Hankook Mirae Technology,¡± he said on Twitter. Other attendees recording the demonstration on their phones got to see Bezos climbing behind the joysticks to wave the bots arms, before asking them, ¡°Why do I feel so much like Sigourney Weaver?¡±

Bezos was showing off his new toy at MARS, Amazon¡¯s invite-only conference focused on robotics, machine learning, and space exploration. Called Method-2, the exosuit is built by South Korea-based Hankook Mirae, with one of the designers being Vitaly Bulgarov, a concept artist who¡¯s worked on films like Ghost In the Shell and Transformers 4: Age of Extinction.

Hankook Mirae Technology

So far, there¡¯s no credible evidence the robot is anything more than a showpiece for Amazon. While it can take slow, shaky steps (support chains on the shoulders anchor it in place), and swing its arms about relatively fluidly, there¡¯s no indication it could actually lift heavy objects relative to its size.

However, that¡¯s not something that should stop someone like Jeff Bezos. As the CEO of both Amazon and the Blue Origin space corporation, as well as being the third-richest person in the world, he could impulsively order a few of these without thinking twice. The same goes for other similarly eccentric technology billionaires like Elon Musk, who might purchase what¡¯s in actuality a glorified metal puppet just for kicks.

But if you had the fortune to spare, who wouldn¡¯t want their very own mech suit to show off to their friends? Just look at how happy Overwatch¡¯s D.Va is with her own.