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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."
StoneCypher is Full of BS
.....acting the way they are and getting into trouble where they need to be stunned in the first place :P
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.
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
Res publica non dominetur
Cops that can be neutralized with a refridgerator magnet! (Hey, it works on Bender!)
Can they stunlock or are there diminishing returns?
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.
Anyone want to bet me that this project gets scrapped in less than a year due to "malfunctioning" bots that zap officers more than civilians ?
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
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.
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.
.
Who operates an autonomous robot? I want that job. I could even do it from home.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
Can I buy one to beat up people that don't pay ?
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
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
...what have you got to be afraid of? Malfunctioning police robots with giant killer tasers?
Oh... wait...
To boldly use to and too two times and get it right too! They're not gonna believe their eyes when they see it there!
In Capitalist West expensive robot stuns you.
In Soviet Russia buggy robot source code stuns you.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
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."
Do NOT welcome our new taser-bearing robot overBZZZZZZTT Gaaaah!
"It doesn't cost enough, and it makes too much sense."
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 ....
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.
I think it can be summarised like this:
- Current AIs are not clever enough to be in charge of weapons, because they aren't capable of understanding when they should be used.
- Science fiction AIs are too clever to be in charge of weapons, because they always use them to take over the world.
On the whole, it sounds like a really really bad idea to give an AI a gun, no matter how smart the AI might be.
>north
You're an immobile computer, remember?
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
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: