Remember when you first saw those robotic dog things several years ago and immediately knew they would one day be used aggressively in some kind of militaristic or security setting? And then some people out there were all like, “No! These robot dogs that can easily have cameras and guns mounted onto them will never be used for evil!”

Turns out they’re being used for evil: in this case, AI companies are snatching them up to protect data centers, according to Fortune.

It makes sense why. AI companies envision a future in which humans don’t have jobs, so of course, the security guards they would hire to protect the data centers that act as the beating heart of AI tech would also be autonomous.

AI Data Centers Are Being Guarded by $300,000 Robot Dogs Now

The robot dogs aren’t cheap, either. Just one of them can cost up to $300,000. Still, some of these AI companies see them as a long-term investment, assuming they’ll eventually pay for themselves within a couple of years. All of that rests on the assumption that the AI boom will continue indefinitely, which it may not.

There’s also the pesky matter of AI companies facing stern resistance to the construction of data centers from members of communities in which those centers would be built. People do not want data centers in their neighborhoods for a variety of reasons.

There is also a dark, poetic quality to it all. Software-driven AI is being positioned by industry leaders as the replacement for office jobs, and autonomous robots are lining up to take your manual labor jobs, leaving nothing for the rest of us.  

For now, robot dogs are just a flashy, wildly expensive toy that is probably a greater symbol of the AI industry’s booming sense of bulletproof excess than an actual threat to anyone’s livelihoods. But it could be a dark harbinger of things to come.