Now Robots Get License to Kill! Innocent Victims are in Danger

The robots to be deployed by the US army can be mounted with machine guns and grenade launchers!

A policy released by San Francisco Police Department proposes to put weaponized robots to use in law and order operations. As per the document, the police department has proposed to bring 17 robots into operation out of which 12 are fully functional. The robots are remote-controlled devices that are generally used in bomb disposal missions. "The department wants to use them for training and simulations, criminal apprehensions, critical incidents, exigent circumstances, executing a warrant, or during suspicious device assessments", says the proposal. The new robotic model, Remotec Andros, is equipped with additional optional weapons, as per The Verge report. The model F5A can efficiently load shotgun shells which are used in bomb detonation. The other robot QinetiQ Talon can also be weaponized. According to the site, a particular model used by the US army can be mounted with machine guns and grenade launchers. 

SFPD, going by the draft proposal, only wants robots to get license to kill people "when the risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD". What is the most striking thing in the draft policy is the manner in which the draft has been manipulated to include 'deadly force' in it. According to the Verge report, the phrase was added after striking out the sentence "Robots shall not be used as a Use of Force against any person" and  "provide ground support and situational awareness". The new proposal is scheduled for discussion in the next week by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors Rules Committee and is expected to set rules and limits for using military-style weapons for local policing. In fact, in the US the practice of converting bomb disposal robots into fire support systems is nothing new. A few robots are already equipped with "Pan" systems that make bullet detonation possible. The technique of using robots to discharge explosives in the vicinity of armed and dangerous suspects has been tried in Dallas in 2016 and since has become a subject of study and experimentation by the US police department in general.

Even though the dangerous concept of using killer robots is a fiercely debated topic in the United States, there is not enough consensus among them to stop the practice right away giving a free hand to the Police force. For example, the model of "robot policemen" developed by the Knightscope company is guarding the roads with around 50 specimens at different locations. Last month, according to a report by The Intercept, Oakland police were considering deploying shotgun-equipped Remotec F5A robots, a decision that is responsible for major robot-making companies like Boston Dynamics, ANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics, and Unitree Robotics pledging against the weaponization of robots. Even as Oakland police say the armed robots would be put to use in emergencies, the real question of "How and who can define the emergency as serious enough to let a mindless bot take a human life" remains.