New York City Mayor Eric Adams unveiled the newest terrifying killer robots from Boston Dynamics this week, which will now be used by the NYPD. Public sentiment against these dangerous murder-bots is extremely high, but Mayor Adams doesn’t care. Maybe you don’t care about police departments utilizing killer robots to patrol the street. But what you should know is that these new killer robots are autonomous – meaning they operate on their own without a human controlling them with a joystick somewhere.
Former New York City mayor and noted pothead Bill DeBlasio was the first one to try to deploy killer robots in 2020 to police the population. Everyone hated the creepy things. Not only did humans hate them because of their creepiness, but also because the things were obviously being used to conduct warrantless surveillance on everyone around them at all times. The project was abandoned in 2021 when the contract with Boston Dynamics ran out.
Some of the new murder-bots revealed by Mayor Adams this week are truly designed to operate on their own, like the K5 Autonomous Security Robot. It uses lidar and sonar sensors to move around on its own, and it can even find a place to recharge itself at night without any help or input from humans.
Is everybody okay with this?
These killer robots are hooked to the internet, which means they’re vulnerable to hackers from places like China. They’re also going to be vulnerable to artificial intelligence (AI) programs within a couple of years. We have a tendency to laugh about this stuff, until we realize that robot dogs can exert enough force in their legs to chop human limbs off (that’s true). Another thing no one has thought through is that it costs $75,000 to make one of these robots. What’s the average salary of an NYPD cop?
If we don’t put the brakes on this technology soon, there won’t be any human police officers left in cities where they’re using this technology. If you had to have an encounter with law enforcement for any reason, would you rather it was a human police officer or a security robot?
