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Ford Has An Idea For An Autonomous Police Car That Could Find A Hiding Spot (jalopnik.com)
Ford has submitted a patent application to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for an autonomous police car that could function "in lieu of or in addition to human police officers." From a report: Now, companies always file patents for technology that may never get made, but an autonomous police cruiser seems like the logical conclusion to the development self-driving cars. But damn is it weird to read about. The patent, describes how the hypothetical car would rely on artificial intelligence and use "on-board speed detection equipment, cameras, and [it would] communicate with other devices in the area such as stationary speed cameras."
In a world of self-driving cars, there will not be any speeders. OPPS!
Ford could partner with Roomba to 'clean up' blighted neighborhoods and provide security theater in more affluent neighborhoods.
Ford could also partner with Google to provide Live up-to-the-minute Street View updates for subsequent off-line analysis for crimes and offenses.
Ken
... Ford tries to raise its share price by making fatuous announcements using flavour-of-the-month automated car meme.
It's not an invention if it doesn't exist! The patent office should reject it!
The question becomes urgent when our technology is better than us at everything. And yeah, pre-crime and all that. That too.
Your patent system is broken. No research, no process, just some tech-lawyer typing up some vague pies in the sky and boom, patent granted.
Here is my patent: "My method includes coming up with methods. Thus making all other methods, both past and future, potential products of my method-producer. The method-producer may or may not communicate with anything. It is AI."
teeth into when [5lashdot.org], SuBscribers. Please
I'm picturing police cars that leave the station parking lot and drive to where they can hide. ;)
If you are going to cut out the police officer from the equation, why bother making it so complicated?
And in jurisdictions where photo radar can't be implemented because of legal restrictions, the same factors that make photo radar illegal would also outlaw automated police cars.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Enough. There will never be autonomous cars. We aren't able to build a system complex enough to handle a task like that. We can barely even create regular programs that are reliable. Moores law is DEAD, and digital computers have reached close to their peak processing power. There will be no breakthroughs in digital computers that will change that - we are bound by the laws of Physics here. So just stop with all the nonsense.
Police say it all the time. If you've done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to hide.
So why do they need to hide? What are they hiding? What are they afraid of?
Isn't the whole point of policing to increase public safety? Isn't the point of enforcing the speed limits to increase public safety? If a visible police presence is seen on a roadway, that alone will deter most drivers from speeding. The stupidest drivers who speed anyway will then get ticketed for speeding.
Police might object that the number of tickets they write would diminish. But isn't that the whole point? If you think that ticketing is a source of revenue then you've already gone down the wrong side of a slippery slope that leads to all kinds of crooked behavior by police. Next police start to think that all sorts of crime should lead to revenue. Lesser and lesser infractions lead to assets seized until at least no crime is needed at all to justify just robbing people for no reason. And this already happens in some places. Police will stop and rob people who have done nothing wrong except for merely being out of state. Seize their money and send them on their way.
Writing tickets is not a goal in and of itself. The goal is to get people to stop speeding. Not to raise money. If a visible police presence stops most speeders, then the job is being done on a better and larger scale than not being able to ticket every single speeder. Hiding is a sign that police ARE doing something shameful and wrong.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
we all know how that turns out
How will they deal with source code and calibration log requests? as if they can't give them our or the calibration has not been done in a log time that ticket get's dismissed
You have 30 seconds to comply!
Ford is building the precursor to ED-209. Will the modern car soon feature a telemetry system that sends data back to the manufacturer? which then have a back door for LEA's to monitor and automatically send you speeding tickets - or at least send the autonomous cruiser to investigate and eventually gather the evidence to ticket you?
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
But when hypotheticals are all that exist regarding something, that designates the thing itself hypothetical. Nothing wrong with dreaming, but at some point a whim must be grounded in reality or it is just a whim. I read about literally everything regarding technology online these days 30+ years ago in Omni magazine. We were more advanced *then*, too. Speculative journalism gets yawn-worthy after awhile. Heads up: we have arrived at 'awhile'.
Why would the police need to hide? I keep hearing if you've done nothing wrong you have no reason to hide anything.
IT IS A FUCKING WISHLIST
Inventions are patentable.
Wishlists and vague descriptions of features are not. At best, they can be prior art preventing the patenting of an actual invention some time in the future.
As long as the car talks with a sarcastic tone and is a Pontiac Firebird.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
I cannot wait for the New Detroit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
Since you can now patent obvious uses of existing technology, I have a an even better patent: "Everything their car does, but with wheels." Get ready to pay!
I have also filed patents on "police cars that use metal", "cars that use paint", "things that happen in 2019".... and more. You know what? I keep thinking of more and more new ideas. They're right! Patents really do stimulate creativity!
At least they already have a theme song to use.
Larry Wallis, Police Car (1977 Stiff Records)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMgkXAug6L0
I'm armed, and dangerous
I prowl the streets at night
I howl when I get the scent
Turn on my flashing light
I sit in the shadows
Waiting for a fight
If you see a creep
In your rear view mirror
It's a hungry black and white
'Cos I'm a police car
Police car
I'm a police car
Police car
Look, my autonomous car can turn left. It's an unique trait that should be given protection right about now. I'm also going to patent any other partial or whole behaviours I can extract from my planner. The combinatorial explosion will feed the patent office during the century.
He lies in wait near the villages;
from ambush he murders the innocent.
His eyes watch in secret for his victims;
like a lion in cover he lies in wait.
He lies in wait to catch the helpless;
he catches the helpless and drags them off in his net.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
volume of NetBSD show That *BSD has
First will come autonomous cars for the public.
Then there will be no need for autonomous police cars as outlined in the patent request.
Some simple code that detects if a driver takes over manual control of an autonomous cars and breaks any driving laws, the autonomous car simple locks the doors and drives to the closest police station.
It all becomes self policing.
Autonomous fire engines and police cars will be needed, but will be used to quickly navigate the streets at safe high speeds.
Remember, once all cars are autonomous we don't need things like stop signs or traffic lights, the cars will communicate with each other and setup appointments to pass through intersections at speed making slight adjustments to miss the cross traffic in the intersection.
Eventually, no person will need to drive any vehicle.
This will also eliminate most personal owner ship of cars. People will use uber like services that use autonomous cars to get around when needed. Houses will no longer need garages, car dealers will go out of business, auto repair shops will convert to fleet maintenance facilities for the fleets of cars used by uber like services and government organizations. There will be no more truck driving jobs, ot taxi drivers. It will be more convenient for food delivery services, when you place your order on line an autonomous car will arrive at the restaurant and the food will be placed in the car for delivery to your door. No tip needed for a driver.
This will be one of the most disruptive technologies in a very long time once it becomes ubiquitous.
for the state of AT&T and BerKeley BSD managed to make failure, its corpse log on Then the
So it can autonomously park behind Lil' John's cocktail lounge. Big deal. Our cops have been doing that for years.
Have gnu, will travel.
Stupid idea since all other cars on the road will be autonomous as well and will not be speeding.
Every time a science fiction writer publishes their book, they should also just fill out a couple dozen patent forms in the process. Of course the 'Epstein Drive' won't actually be invented before the sci-fi patent expires, but hey at least there will be prior art on the books... Or if you have the money I guess you could just patent anything you want right now, as long as you are sure to include the notion that some sort of included "AI" will just make it work.
Traffic duty cops are road pirates. They chase you down and steal your money. Taxation is theft. Piracy is alive and well on the streets of America.
Patents are choking the world's innovation, and no one objects. Once all stupid ideas are patented, no one will be able to do anything innovative anymore without paying royalties to the industry's giants.
Is it going to have a robotically controlled gun that murders unarmed suspects and/or bystanders?
Do we want Knight Automated Roving Robot. Because this is how we get Knight Automated Roving Robot.
The automation of highway robber-like behavior continues apace.
It's bad enough much human interaction amounts to throwing money at people until they go away, the bulk of "Hell is other people", but now we have to throw money at robots until they go away, laying the takings at the feet of their masters?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It's merely a progression.
Fuck You!
Perhaps there is an advantage over speed camera, but it is not obvious.
There is a huge drawback: a police car without policeman will be a nice target for vandalism
Wait, no, they did not - it was a car site that noticed the patent.
Ron Goulart, "Into the Shop" I read it in 1970 (or 1964?) in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, but since this topic keeps coming up, I bought myself a (used) copy of his book "What's become of Screwloose? and other Inquiries", where the story was reprinted. (The book has a stamp from the Seton Catholic High School. Gotta love those Jesuits, or whatever brand of Catholic bought this.) The story should be required reading for anybody who proposes this kind of nonsense.
Technology is good in a lot of ways. But every day life it's creating anxiety from forced spying, creepy video surveillance, License plate readers (Now ICE can look at plate locations going back 5 years). It's to the point that you have to satisfy everyone who's watching you. Even my onkyo stereo and especially the new samsung TVs have privacy policies that are impressively horrifying. Creepy as shit.