71–80 of 145 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The primary purpose of that shotgun is IED/UXO disruption, ostensibly. It's unfortunate that the robots have been used as weapons, and that people aren't in prison for it. But I think arming AI-equipped drones specifically to kill is a much more worrisome threat.
Better robots than people in that position.
Slaughterbots (from 2018) is pretty terrifying. Do you want your local police force to have this? https://youtu.be/HipTO_7mUOw
You remove police from the harms ways - you remove the glorification and their high-caste "above the law" status, and their union wouldn't have such huge political power, nor public support for those state budget crushing humongous pensions.
Also with a robot shooting precisely there would be no need for that "stopping power" BS with illegal under Geneva hollow point bullets killing that violently that the police so likes to use (driving end result more toward death due to large blood loss and tremendous tissue damage inflicted by the hollow point - all unnecessary really). The robot(s) can just precisely disable arms and/or legs with much less severe wounds (like police in some other countries do) using smaller caliber or even just an electric shock or temporarily motor nerve blocking agent, sleeping chemicals, etc.
Also the robots will treat people equally, and thus big people getting the same law enforcement treatment as the rest of us little people may force the big people to adjust the law enforcement toward more reasonable approach. (i mean for example why the corporate IT support sucks so much? Well, what you would expect giving that the execs have their separate IT. Imagine if they had to use the same IT as rank-and-file and the IT couldn't tell whether it is an exec or regular Shmoe :)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a sad fact in the USA that you might encounter an armed criminal almost anywhere. I have personally seen a bunch of crimes involving gunfire, rather than mere brandishing of weapons. On the other hand, police carry a lot of weapons, typically a handgun, pepper spray, a taser, a baton, and a heavy switchblade knife, plus a shotgun or rifle in the car. But they're relatively poorly trained and (even taking police…
The vast majority of police never actually need their weapons. So why are they routinely carrying them? https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/08/a-closer-lo... There's tons of dangerous things we could carry around just in case, but we don't because they'd be seen as aggressive.
Aer they over-armed, poorly trained, and often unreasonably paranoid? Yes. Being armed doesn't defend one against being surprised, and radios have saved far more police lives than guns on hips. But the work is by nature unpredictable, and the US is an unusually heavily armed society.
You're going to have a hard time recruiting or getting people to pay taxes for unarmed security. That gap is filled to some extent by community volunteers, but sadly that's not a very effective response in political terms.
I was always wondering which one would become true first. Robocop or Terminator. With enough abuse of technological advances, both are only a matter of time. I hope humanity figures out a peaceful utopia where everyone can be fed with tablets which give all nutrients and are freely distributed, and robots do work so humans don't have to. But looking at human history, I remain sceptical, it looks like the robocop/term…
It's our children I truly fear for- as in by the time they are in their 40's who knows how bad things will be.
Edit-added last stuffs.
Autonomous fire control, I agree. But remote fire control on non-lethal weapons?
The EFF’s argues a physically-present officer “will have better information about unfolding dangers and opportunities to de-escalate.” I want evidence. A remote officer has no threat to life. They can’t use a self defence argument in court. And they can think through things calmly. We also have more opportunity to record their inputs and actions and thus increase accountability. The “hackers will inevitably try to commandeer armed police robots” concern is real, but not insurmountable, and de-risked by limiting networked drones to non-lethal weapons. As for “capabilities of police to conduct crowd control by force” being “too great,” forcing humans into harm’s way seems like a wrong, circuitous way to address it.
Police brutality is real. But so is the brutality of criminal activity. We owe this question more thought than a knee-jerk NRA-esque reaction.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the US doesn't do it the others will(Russia, China etc).
That's an empty argument. Criticizing American military and government doesn't mean you can't criticize others.
The militarization of the police in the US is a huge problem that is out of control. I was extremely disappointed that Obama didn’t not only rein in this militarization but effectively made it worse. We are now having to deal with a generation of cops who think they are GI Joe but don’t have the training. This is why so many unarmed people are getting shot by the cops, because they start their day thinking they are i…
Training isn't the issue, it's the lack of accountability. Military members are under the threat of being court martialed and spending time in military prison. They know they have less rights in military court than they would as civilians, and that punishment can be harsh. Cops, on the other hand, know that the system will bend over backwards to accommodate whatever transgression or crime they commit. They can and do…
From everything that I've witnessed and heard, police culture is the polar opposite. You "do favors", "hook each other up", and "overlook mistakes". All of this breeds the bacteria, rather than killing it off.
I am not sure I agree with the EFF on this one. If the future of cars is autonomous to save lives, then the future of police could be the same for the same reasons. The 1951 version of the The Day the Earth Stood Still, with an all-powerful robot GORT that neutralized human aggression left an imprint on me. I honestly think a legion of GORTs will be better than a legion of humans - if only because I believe the end o…
> If the future of cars is autonomous to save lives, then the future of police could be the same for the same reasons. The presumption that there is such a thing as "the future of police" is worrisome. The now nearly 200-year experiment of designating a tiny subset of the population as exclusively responsible for public safety and law enforcement goes very poorly. The abolitionist movement is as strong today as any t…
There will always be rules, people will always break them and some group of specialists will always be trusted with extra responsibility to deal with those people.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If the future of cars is autonomous to save lives, then the future of police could be the same for the same reasons. The presumption that there is such a thing as "the future of police" is worrisome. The now nearly 200-year experiment of designating a tiny subset of the population as exclusively responsible for public safety and law enforcement goes very poorly. The abolitionist movement is as strong today as any t…
The police abolitionism is much stronger in the US, where you can trace lineage of police to slavers and union-busting hit squads, than in the rest of the civilized world.
> The first publicly funded, organized police force with officers on duty full-time was created in Boston in 1838. Boston was a large shipping commercial center, and businesses had been hiring people to protect their property and safeguard the transport of goods from the port of Boston to other places, says Potter. These merchants came up with a way to save money by transferring to the cost of maintaining a police force to citizens by arguing that it was for the “collective good.”
> In the South, however, the economics that drove the creation of police forces were centered not on the protection of shipping interests but on the preservation of the slavery system.*
Police were union-busting, as well:
> For example, businessmen in the late 19th century had both connections to politicians and an image of the kinds of people most likely to go on strike and disrupt their workforce. So it’s no coincidence that by the late 1880s, all major U.S. cities had police forces. Fears of labor-union organizers and of large waves of Catholic, Irish, Italian, German, and Eastern European immigrants, who looked and acted differently from the people who had dominated cities before, drove the call for the preservation of law and order, or at least the version of it promoted by dominant interests.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If the future of cars is autonomous to save lives, then the future of police could be the same for the same reasons. The presumption that there is such a thing as "the future of police" is worrisome. The now nearly 200-year experiment of designating a tiny subset of the population as exclusively responsible for public safety and law enforcement goes very poorly. The abolitionist movement is as strong today as any t…
> When do we start getting serious about visualizing a future without police? There will always be rules, people will always break them and some group of specialists will always be trusted with extra responsibility to deal with those people.