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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."
It's a bad day to be a criminal, and soon the police force will be out of a job. Robotaserthing is in town, and ready to electrocute some scum.
On a more serious note, it's not like this was unexpected, and it's not the first of the line either. We're smack right in the middle of the robotic era, from mini automated vacuum cleaners, to hover spy robots, to shotgun equipped killing machines. This is just another step, and it's not going to end, ever.
Well......it could end for us, but not for the robots.
"we've got trenchcoats and bad attitudes" - John Constantine, HellBlazer
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Isn't this a violation? Oh, wait. It was human programming.
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With over 75 deaths from stun guns in the four years before 2005, it seems these weapons can be lethal. If the recipient has a heart condition, or is on stimulants, there is a significant risk of death from the taser. Very little research is being done on the use of tasers on people, but it is somehow considered 'safe' - seemingly by mere assumption.
In my research, I found this article: Prehosp Emerg Care. 2006 Oct-Dec;10(4):447-50 "Taser use in restraint-related deaths."
You can search pubmed for this article.
- ABB Cynic's Report
Asimov's laws are really nice, but I don't see law enforcement agencies or authorities turning to a sci-fi novel for guidance. Let's face it, the UK authorities don't pay much attention to George Orwell's 1984 ....
A long time ago I heard about a survey of bank customers who preferred automatic teller machines to human tellers because the computerised version is friendlier.
Now, cops are not known to be friendly, in fact, many problems arise when they depart from established procedures and start setting policy, rather than enforcing it.
I would say that a robot which is programmed to respond in a particular way would do so all the time. The real problem comes when Government finds out that robot police are so cheap they can put one every ten metres along every street in the city. That would worry me. Probably worth pointing out that while speed cameras pay for themselves we don't have millions of the things on the roads yet, at least where I live.
As long as we can trust our governments to want to stay popular, they might continue to use technology appropriately. I hope so, anyway.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Be careful what you wish for. We have an extensive speed camera network in the UK, and over a period of time they do reduce average speed, but it's received criticism for a number of reasons: