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Armed Police Bots with Stun Guns
foniksonik writes "'On 28 June, Taser International of Arizona announced plans to equip robots with stun guns ... the new stun-capable robots could be used against civilians.' Non-lethal weapons experts are concerned that the robots will have to stun the suspected criminal for longer periods of time while awaiting human police to come make the official arrest. "If someone is severely punished by an autonomous robot, who are you going to take to a tribunal?" asks Steve Wright, a security expert at Leeds Metropolitan University, UK."
To me this s pretty funny. Has anyone seen the bot they use in the bomb squad? I mean if you put a machine gun on that thing even a dog in a wheel chair would be able to get away in time. I think that things like this are not really effect as an actual combat or police platform in terms of hitting your target, but rather provide a heavy scare factor. I can imagine that most people would see it and thing terminator and run like hell rather then walk briskly past it and just push it over which is all it would really take to disable it.
Res publica non dominetur
civilians arming themselves with stinger missiles and radio jammers
[Mr. Kinney points a pistol at ED-209]
ED-209: [menacingly] Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply.
[Mr. Kinney drops the pistol on the floor]
ED-209: [ED-209 advances, growling] You have 15 seconds to comply.
[Mr. Kinney tries to run away]
ED-209: You have 10 seconds to comply.
[entire room of people in full panic trying to stay out of the line of fire]
ED-209: You have 5 seconds to comply... four... three... two... one... I am now authorized to use physical force!
[ED-209 opens fire and shreds Mr. Kinney]
From the movie Robocop.
Intent to do harm??? How can a robot determine that? As a helpful hint, humans have a problem figuring that out - that's why we have courts, juries and appeals. But here a dumb robot is suddenly capable to tell if you have an intent to do harm? For example, can this wonderful robot tell the difference between a weaponless pocket thief and a group of boys armed with super-soakers? Any generic machine would taser the boys and leave the thief alone; to do it the other way around you need to understand far more about our society that a modern excuse for a computer can possibly do.
P.S. Tasering a child can kill the child; if that happens I have no pity for any official who promoted the idea. At this stage of development of an AI I can trust the computer only to show a letter 'a' on the screen when I press the 'a' key.
Why not just have the bots detain people instead of arming them with something that could seriously injure or kill someone (heart-atacks, etc.)
Help Me! I'm trapped in the tubes! Oh noes! Here comes a internet!
Why only worry about "autonomous robots"? Even remote-controlled robots with stun guns would worry me. Anything that would make it easier for a cop to hurt someone without looking into the whites of their eyes would worry me.
I seriously doubt these things are actually autonomous, given that theres no source in the article and I was under the impression that bomb squad robots are remote controlled. Upon further inspection at Taser International's website shows that this is a "strategic alliance" with a robotics company that may lead to "...remotely controlled or autonomous robotic systems..."
Now, I may be behind on things, but what autonomous robot systems, if any, are in use today with law enforcement? From my knowledge of electrical engineering, I seriously doubt that the word "autonomous" is intended to be in that sentence (ie, it was added by some guy in marketing that didn't know better). I'm sure others here will have more knowledge on this. I really can't think of a situation where current robotics can operate autonomously in a complex, changing situation and was under the impression that all such robots were remote controlled.
Secondly, I find it interesting that according to the official announcement from Taser International, this is coming about as part of a "strategic alliance" with iRobot, the company who's building robots for the military. According to Taser Int'l, "This combination of capabilities will allow law enforcement, federal, and military users to employ TASER technology from an iRobot® platform at a safe distance to engage, incapacitate, and control dangerous suspects without exposing those personnel, the suspect, or bystanders to unnecessary risks."
We have human police officers on the street because humans are the best able to determine what's going on with all their senses. If you take some guy sitting behind his desk and only give him a 90-degree-angled video feed and a cheap microphone to listen in with, that kills a large part of his effectiveness, and we end up with plenty more problems than we started with. Cops should be able to do their jobs better when they can judge situations with all of their senses.
And then, who needs reasonable suspicion when you don't have to physically taze someone? How could this NOT be a vehicle for the perversion of power? Somebody said earlier, Anything that would make it easier for a cop to hurt someone without looking into the whites of their eyes would worry me and I couldn't agree more. And let's not even get into buggy software or hacking enabling these robots to go after children or bill collectors or something.
As a sidenote, let's compare these things to real cops: would disabling one of these things be tantamount to committing capital murder? If it calls for backup, is another RoboTaserCop going to come to its aid? How do these travel to the scene of a crime? If they're controlled remotely as the original announcement states, from where? A patrol car a few meters away, where any criminal who would be a threat to an actual officer can still shoot the officer from his car, or a desk kilometers away, requiring repeated tasing while an officer is sent to arrest? Is running away from one of these things considered evading arrest? I mean, it's a robot out to hurt you...
I'd be very hesitant to have robots with tasers running around but I think it's fair to point out there might actually be some really positive aspects to this.
Cops have caught a lot of flack lately for over aggressiveness and in a lot of those cases the reason is the cop has to be aggressive is to protect himself. With a robot we can let it basically do totally suicidal things to try and subdue the suspect without harming him.
Also cops can be intimidating when it's not necessarily good to be intimidating. If a big guy with a gun and a nightstick comes after you then your fight or flight responses kick in and you might start acting irrationally. If a weak robot without weapons attempts to arrest you it could lead to much more calm thought and actions on both sides of the fence. Of course thats assuming the suspect to be arrested would act rationally in the first place.
If they plan to allow a machine decide whether to taser somebody, expect this idea to vanish in a blinding plasma cloud of litigation. If they're talking about a human being operating this device by remote control, then whoever's at the switch is on the hook legally for any claim of excessive force, especially since the operator wouldn't be in any danger (the usual excuse of an overzealous police officer.)
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Last month a Texas Ranger (state police, not ball club member) fired a taser at a guy who had just poured gasoline all over himself. The spark set off the gas and fried the guy. The ranger is is trouble because he should have known better. Even if he hadn't seen the gas can he could have smelled the gas.
I'm betting these robots won't be able to smell gas. That's just one situation and limitation. Everything they can't do that a person can is a possible problem.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
So a company in America says they're going to try mounting tasers on robots, and before the first prototype is even built, and long before the first police department decides to evaluate them, some guy on the other side of the Atlantic is worrying about who to sue, if the robots ever get used in his country?
Besides, isn't the answer obvious? You sue the organization or individual who decided to deploy the robot. Whend did universities become repositories of dumb?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.