Police Robots - Real Life RoboCop
Written by: Katia Litvak
Robots have made significant impact on various aspects of our lives, including our professions. Not limited to only assembly lines, robots have also made impacts in the area of law enforcement.
In May 2017, the first Robot-Officer was deployed into duty in Dubai. The robot, functions mainly around tourist attractions and malls, assisting tourists and citizens, who can ask the Robot questions, pay fines, and access a variety of police information. The Robot Police incorporates advanced technologies such as facial recognition.1 In addition to this beat cop, the Dubai Police are expected to deploy driverless robotic patrol vehicles, which will be equipped with biometric software to scan for wanted criminals and potential suspects. The patrol vehicles will even be able to launch drones that send video back to the Dubai Police command room.
Police Robots have various benefits: they can perform undesirable police work such as dangerous or low-skilled jobs, and they enable information to be shared more efficiently across the entire police force.
However, there are certain negative implications of this technology that need to be considered: Reliance on manufactured robots to do police work effectively allows private corporations the ability to control aspects of society that were formerly controlled by the government. Further, like the use of robots in the military there is a concern that without a ‘human in the loop’ we cannot fully trust a robot to optimally respond to all situations, perhaps applying excessive force when a human would understand that it is uncalled for. There are also concerns of innocents being mistreated or hurt by robots, as well as a lack of clarity with regard to liability. Additionally, there are social concerns, including the possibility that highly trained officers will lose their jobs to robots or that the citizenry will not sufficiently trust robots to police them.
Another implication that could arise from extensive use of Robot Police is the fact that they can be hacked and remotely controlled by hackers, and used by criminals for various malicious purposes, causing unknown and harmful results.
With the great technological advancements of artificial intelligence and robotics, comes great responsibility. As society incorporates more sophisticated Robot Police to take over traditional tasks of policing, we will be faced with various problems which should be addressed and regulated sooner rather than later.
