stickdog99 wrote:Nordic » 13 Jul 2016 06:33 wrote:And isn't anyone asking who paid for this fucking robot?
Where did it come from? How much did it cost? How many does the Dallas PD have at their disposal? What other cities have them? Shouldn't we all be at least vaguely aware of what our tax dollars are being spent on? Is this a city purchase or a generous gift from Homeland Security? It's stupid we don't have anyone asking these fucking questions.
Believe it or not, it looks as if
Dallas has (or at least had) 101 of them.
Search for "Dallas robot" in the first chart of the link.
So only 100 left now.
Northrop Grumman; $100,000+ (but, "military-grade robots are on the cusp of getting a lot cheaper and more capable, due to decreases in the cost of processing power, advances in 3D printing, and other factors.")
As military-grade robotics get cheaper and more capable, someone will arm them and put them on American streets.
"Robot-maker Sean Bielat says he’s fine with the Dallas Police Department’s apparently unprecedented use of a police bomb-disposal robot to kill a gunman on Thursday. “A robot was used to keep people out of harm’s way in an extreme situation,” said Bielat, the CEO of Endeavor Robotics, a spinoff of iRobot’s military division. “That’s how robots are intended to be used.”
Joergen Pedersen, the CEO of RE2 robotics and the chairman of the National Defense Industrial Association’s robotics division concurred. “If these robots are used in manners for which they were unintended, we would expect that the officers who are there to keep citizens and themselves safe would use good judgment where the application of lethal force is a last resort,” he said.
On Sunday, speaking to Face the Nation, Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings blessed the operation. “The chief had two options and he went with this one. I supported him completely because it was the safest way to approach it,” he said.
But some ethicists are worried.
“My initial reaction was that we have just got onto the slippery slope,” said Heather Roff, a senior research fellow at Oxford and a research scientist at Arizona State University’s Global Security Initiative.
“This is going to be very hard to put back and that the militarization of police capabilities means that they may now feel that it is reasonable to use robotics in this way to ensure compliance…If one doesn’t have to talk to a subject and can demand compliance, then this may mean more forceful or coercive demands are made.”
More..
http://www.defenseone.com/technology/20 ... ts/129769/
We should all be very, very worried.