<i>San Francisco police consider letting robots use ‘deadly force’</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33728664" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33728664</a> - Nov 2022 (86 comments)<p><i>Draft policy proposal would authorize SF Police to use deadly force with robots</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33726496" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33726496</a> - Nov 2022 (209 comments)<p><i>Robots authorized to kill in SFPD draft policy</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33720719" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33720719</a> - Nov 2022 (11 comments)
Isn’t the entire point of officers being allowed to use lethal force that their lives are in danger?<p>Killing people remotely when you are completely safe just seems like straight up murder.
Isn't this the same city that declared policing racist and made shoplifting anything less than $1000 a misdemenoar, whose DAs refuse to prosecute crime, and who declared bail discriminatory?<p>I am very very very confused about what is going on in SF right now.
I really wish we'd draw some harder lines between "robot" (autonomous), versus "drones" (remote controlled by a human). The article is in fact discussing drones, not robots, so the salient point [to misquote a phrase from the gun control debate] "drones don't kill people, drone operators kill people" - the SFPD is asking here for a new and safer way to murder civilians.
> The idea of robots being legally allowed to kill has garnered some controversy.<p>Since these "robots" are not autonomous, you can substitute "guns" for "robots" in the above sentence. The sentence remains true but becomes banal.<p>The big ethical difference is that the remote trigger puller can no longer justify the act by a threat to their own life, only to other lives.
<i>On July 7, 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson ambushed a group of police officers in Dallas, Texas, shooting and killing five officers, and injuring nine others. Two civilians were also wounded. . . .</i><p><i>Following the shooting, Johnson fled inside a building on the campus of El Centro College. Police followed him there, and a standoff ensued. In the early hours of July 8, police killed Johnson with a bomb attached to a remote control bomb disposal robot. The robot charged into Johnson's legs and detonated, which killed him. It was the first time U.S. law enforcement used a robot to kill a suspect.</i><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shooting_of_Dallas_police_officers" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_shooting_of_Dallas_police...</a>
Craig Strete[1] has a short story about "womb-cops" that patrol the streets from the safety of a command centre and "burn down" people who break the law. I think the likelihood of increased use of deadly force in a remote situation is quite high.<p>[1]<a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Strete" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Strete</a>
Nothing to see here folks; move along.<p>> "robots will only be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers are imminent and outweigh any other force option available to the SFPD."<p>See? Nothing there. Go about your business.<p>> Though robots can potentially be equipped with explosive charges to breach certain structures, they would only be used in extreme circumstances<p>See? It'll be only in extreme circumstances.<p>Killing someone <i>should</i> be difficult. Maybe it should even endanger your own life. Otherwise it's too easy to press the button.
San Francisco is weird. My wife and I enjoyed our visit last month where we sat at an outdoor cafe and watched people stealing bikes and furniture (yes, seriously).<p>I am going to be less entertained by watching murder robots wandering the streets, so perhaps I will eat elsewhere next time.
Yes, and perhaps these robots can use data science techniques to determine, e.g. based on looks, which people are most likely to be offenders.<p>/s
This is a bit clickbaity. The article says:<p><i>"robots will only be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers are imminent and outweigh any other force option available to the SFPD."</i>