What would be the criteria for police androids?

Great Debates
1

I’m not sure that this question belongs in GD. However, I am sure that it doesn’t belong in GQ. Anyway…

I’m inspired to ask this question after catching the tail end of a Sci-Fi movie on TV today.* It was from a common enough storyline, best exemplified by RoboCop; to combat modern day crime, a police department develops a robotic/android/whatever “supercop” to unleash on the mean streets. Usually, at this point in the plot synopsis, “something goes terribly wrong.”

But…movie cliches aside, and assuming that we had the technology to actually build such a robot (I was thinking something along these lines), what kind of criteria would it have to meet before it could be used for police work, in a “first world” country like the United States?

If I may kick things off…

•Cost, of course, would be a major concern. If each robot cost $50 Billion, they would obviously be too expensive for any single police department to buy…much less maintain, repair, or put in harms way in active service. And just having one “RoboCop” per city would just be ineffectual. You’d want platoons of the things.

•You’ll notice that the “Terminator” in the link above has a gating gun built into one arm. Obviously, that’d have to go…if you wanted a machine that dealt with all crime with mindless firepower, it’d just be easier to drop a bomb on your own city.

Plus, with the inevitable liability problems—and bad PR—of having literal “killing machines” stalking your city’s streets, I’d wager to guess that the first few “generations” of the RoboCops wouldn’t equipped with—or allowed to use—anya ctual lethal weaponry. Probably for several decades, and most likely never.

•Finally, the matter of independence of, and control over, the Robocops. If they’re just fully remote controlled, their usefulness would be extremely limited. If they’re mindless automatons with the cognizance of a waffle iron, again, they’d be of limited use, and probably be dangerous. But if they’re truly artificially intelligent, “thinking” machines, capable of independent action, you’ve got other problems…the Robocops might go berserk. Or decide to run off to Vegas and become a Hare Krishna. Or decide to try and sue the government for emancipation from it’s “slavery.” Or any number of things.

So…anyone want to take this very silly issue on?

Trust me, I won’t be “offended” if no one does. It is, after all, a completely ridiculous question. Even I can see that.
*To be fair, the movie was “R.O.T.O.R.”
Ranchoth
(Should have gone in IMHO. Definitely.)

2

Well, since it IS a cop, the first requirement would be the ability to discern skin color, and then harass any darker-skinned humans accordingly.

3

ILM, Vol I- even tho I find that to be a misleading stereotype of law enforcement officers, I also acknowledge that it’s true enough to induce a…

SCAM!!!

You owe me a new monitor!

4

Ever seen THX1138? Lucas’s first (and probably best) film. It has android cops. Of course, you have to wonder what would happen when the Blade Runner division got wind of what was being planned…

5

The question really misses something factually important: namely, that the vast, vast majority of police work is straight human interaction (tickets, questioning, reporting, etc), not Robocop-style gunfighting. Build such a machine and the army might be very interested, but the police wouldn’t be.

Though if you could build an android cop that can competently handle the human interaction angle, you’d have a much wider market than law enforcement. Imagine having our first robotic candidate for office.

6

Well, with a few minor changes to the US Constitution, we could have one as early as next year. :wink:

7

I do not think, excepting parking meter patrol, robots replacing cops anytime soon.

However, I think a robotic partner could be a quite useful thing, in a K-9 sense, and considering the price of training a K-9 unit… what was it, 16,000 or 8,000? at a certain point that would still be before it was consumer-friendly, it would be economic for police to have one, if only as a super-laptop to record daily interaction, and possibly to send into dangerous situations before the cop had to go.

8

Why? Is Gore running again?

9

No need to amend the Constitution for the Gorebot, however, one would need to amend it for Arhnold to run.

10

Cost is an issue but a handful of highly mobile robotic police units could cover alot of ground.

Why not…Robot “SWAT” teams might be the best possible application. A few years of R&D could probably get rolling remote controlled units self exploring a building and that return fire directly down the path of projectiles fired at them. Reading inbound shots by muzzle flash and or trianglating sound sources by multiple microphones. Safeties could be in the form of accelerometers and such that detect impacts to the shell of the robot, so weapons would not even go “hot” until it was struck by weapon fire or a heavy blow.

Personally I am puzzled why we don’t use more remote technology in hostile situations.

Example a camera/gun turret on the roof of a squad car. Officer can stay under cover in or behind his vehicle and could direct the turret via a remote control unit with a video screen on it.

Or an armed flash/sound detection robot mounted on the roof of a police car. Officer pulls a safety release in the car if fired on and the robot starts scanning for gunfire sources and firing on the source of the gunfire shot for shot. No hosing the area with streams of automatic fire. In that way the only dangers are if the officer has enabled the system (dispatch could also be automatically alerted to a system being triggered via radio systems) and someone is continuing to fire in the direction of the police car.

It could be set to ignore weapon fire within say 15 feet of the vehicle so as not to shoot officers firing their weapons.
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11

Because it’s very expensive and not very useful? How often are there police shootouts that require that kind of firepower?

12

Although I agree it is rarely applied, so are swat teams and just about every major city has those.

I am also not referring to this turret having some kind of chain gun or something, something like a 9mm handgun in a reinforced housing. OR better yet to assuage the concerns of inappropriate lethal force, beanbag/clayball shotshells in a short barreled shotgun type unit.

13

Wow… this is silly… they should harass badly dressed people AND darker-skinned. Add to that any Arab looking too.

On a serious note thou… I doubt they would give killing power to robots no matter how advanced. Robots cant “die” and so the need for defense is much smaller. Thou of course some non lethal weapons do end up killing of course.

Well the image of a gatling gun firing rubber bullets just came to my mind… talk about lethal “non-lethal” weapons for crowd control.

14

The robots in my example would most likely be returning fire directed at officers which would be a legitimate use of lethal force.