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."

Comments

3 Laws

[kramulous]

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.

Re:Easy...

[MichaelSmith]

Besides, I don't think armed robots roaming the streets would fly with a whole lot of folks.

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.