New York: NYPD announces the return of robot dogs in the United States

In New York City, Mayor Eric Adam has announced that the police department will soon be welcoming new semi-autonomous robot dogs. This decision comes two years after the NYPD (New York Police Department) ended its first attempt to use a camera-wearing robot dog for surveillance after a massive public outcry. The citizens felt that this was a dystopian excess of police power.

The NYPD is to acquire two controversial spot robots from Boston Dynamic, the robot design company. Although the robot dogs have autonomous capabilities, they say these units won’t be patrolling the streets on their own for the time being. Instead, robot dogs will be deployed in specific cases where the danger to humans will be high, much like the Bomb Squad robots the department already uses. Each spot will cost around 75 thousand dollars, with the cameras and sensors attached to their cops costing extra.

Spot isn’t the only rookie robot to join the NYPD. The department is testing the use of another robot, the KnightscopeK5. This human-sized robot is equipped with cameras, sensors and loudspeakers. It is designed to patrol and monitor the surrounding area, deterring burglary and vandalism.

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Past damage caused by robot dogs

Kenji Urada was a Japanese factory worker who was killed by a robot. Urada was a maintenance worker at the Kawasaki Heavy Industrie plant in Akashi. He died checking a faulty robot. After jumping over a safety barrier designed to cut the machine’s power supply, he inadvertently started the robot. The robot pinned him against an adjacent machine and stabbed him in the back. The international press service reported that Urada was the very first human to be killed by a robot on December 8, 1981, but wrongly so, because the very first person killed two years earlier by a robot was Robert Williams, a worker at Ford Motor Company’s Michigan Casting Center.

The circumstances of his death were only made public after an investigation by the Hyōgo labor and standards office had been completed. The survey concluded that workers were not sufficiently familiar with the machines, and that these machines were not sufficiently regulated. To this end, the robot that killed Urada has been removed from the Akashi plant, and man-height fences have been erected around the plant’s two robots in the wake of the accident. Similarly, some time ago at a major robotics company in Japan, four robots developed for military applications killed 29 people in the laboratory.

Technological advance in the world: a good idea or not?

Some believe that letting robots control everything could be dangerous for people, as these dogs have no emotions or sensations and could become dysfunctional at any moment, in which case they could attack people. Others, however, believe that with these robots, the flow of corruption could be reduced, and the world would look a little fairer than with humans in control. Also, unlike humans, robots are programmed to do specific things and won’t deviate from their objectives.

However, it is important to remain vigilant in the face of the rise of robotic surveillance, and to reflect on the consequences of artificial intelligence. Robots can be useful, but they also pose ethical and social challenges. We must not let technology take over our humanity.

We need to question societal choices and ensure that the use of robots is regulated and controlled. We must not simply accept technological advances without considering the impact on our lives and freedoms. Let’s remain human and demand a future where technology serves humanity, not the other way round.