ICE wants robot dogs. Boston Dynamics' workers urge company to 'cancel the sale'
Comments
paxy
cvwright
They thought it would be their friends running the show, sending the robot dogs after their enemies.
collingreen
Im not sure if it's hilarious or sad to hear "I didn't think the ~leopards~ robot dogs would eat MY face!"
mindslight
Yes? Adults just generally call this "national defense". I don't see why you felt the need to phrase it in kids' terms?
yownie
exactly this
mindslight
If F-35's start being used to bomb American cities, should the people who worked on them just have seen that coming as well?
At least to me, there's a huge difference between working for a defense contractor and expecting your creations to be used in the national interest, and seeing your creations turned against your fellow citizens for depraved political stunts.
And as for what they maybe should have been able to see coming? I'm not going to put them down for their realizations coming a bit late. Doing that is much better than simply doubling down in denial, as if this result had been their intent all along.
(And yeah yeah, forever war. I've personally never worked for a defense contractor, quite deliberately. But I can still understand the perspective of someone who does)
TrnsltLife
It's ICE. So not your fellow citizens. Mostly.
But I agree we shouldn't be using robot dogs for this. They should be reserved for tracking down and destroying banned books.
mindslight
"mostly not" still implies some though, right? A few bad applies spoil the whole bunch, and all that. And this particular dump truck of them has been purposefully left to rot a long time.
When an organization distances itself from criminals and facilitates justice being served, it can credibly claim to be an institution of civil society. But when an organization not only gives a pass to, but deliberately goes out of its way to protect first and second degree murderers, that's called a criminal conspiracy.
paxy
Look up the 1033 Program. Billions worth of surplus military equipment is sent to local police departments across the USA every year. If you work for a weapons manufacturer (sorry "defense contractor") and think you have any say in how your work gets used you are delusional.
mindslight
What is the actual larger point you're trying to make? Like what exactly is your goal in labeling people "delusional" ?
As I said - personally as an engineer who easily could have, I've deliberately never worked for a weapons manufacturer. Mainly because I've seen the tools being used for continual aggression onto other countries (eg "GWOT"), but these days equipment transfer to domestic "law enforcement" would certainly be part of it too.
But I do respect that there is a core of people who differ from my perspective, still believing in institutions like national defense, either not aware of or not concerned about the things I am. If they are just now becoming concerned with misuse of their creations - even if just in a narrow way against US citizens - why should I not view this as common ground we can share? Why would I want to emphasize where we differ and rub it in their face? The only thing I would see that doing is alienating them from the things we do agree on.
diegof79
The Boston Dynamics website describes the product as being used by the government to “remotely assess and de-escalate tense or hazardous situations.”
So I’d love to hear from one of those employees about how they imagined those use cases.
Either they have huge cognitive dissonance, or I’m too cynical, because I cannot imagine a situation where a robot designed to remotely spy (sorry, assess) or apply force, lethal or not (aka de-escalate tense situations), wouldn't end up being used for the wrong things.
dibujaron
say you have a suspect, somewhere in a building, with a gun. If you send in a cop to the building, and the suspect points their gun at the cop, the cop must shoot the suspect, and if they shoot they must shoot to kill. So now the suspect is dead.
if you send in a mobile robot first, then you don't have to send in a human to scout. You can find the suspect and assess the situation without having to put a human at risk (and therefore in a situation where they have to shoot to defend themselves). This helps both the cop and the suspect remain alive.
diegof79
Thanks for the description. I can imagine the benefits, not only in that situation but also in situations with hostages or bombs.
However, my point is that the technology also enables bad use cases, and you don’t need much analysis to see that.
The difference between a human cop and a robot is scale and a lack of empathy (although it is hard to attribute any empathy to some cops). You can send a swarm of robots to scan a neighborhood, with little human intervention. The purpose of that scan could be to catch terrorists, immigrants, or political dissidents.
The people who designed these things are pretty aware of that, but they do it anyway and now act as if surprised. It's like Lockheed Martin employees complaining about missiles; don’t work for a missile manufacturer in the first place.
hoppyhoppy2
It might be tempting for agents to just strap a bomb to the robot to blow up the suspect without due process, like police in Dallas did in 2016.
defrost
Not an employee, however, with regard to existing use cases:
* during COVID period Singapore used BD dogs to walk parks and remind people to maintain social distance,
* BD dogs are used to remotely assess bomb threats and structurally dubious / unsafe sites for victims / dangers to rescuers.
As for the closing thought above, it's a sad truth that many many things "end up being used for the wrong things" .. whether that's innuendo or fascist over reach.
ButlerianJihad
Well, the “good news” is that any tech like this that is available to your friendly local LEO, will also be available on the black market to organized crime.
So just wait until we see jousting RobotWars in our streets with cop-aligned killer K9 troops fighting to the death with the Crips and Bloods remote-control drone dawgz.
If you didn't want the government to buy your killer robots then maybe you shouldn't have been BUILDING KILLER ROBOTS for the last two decades. What did you think the hundreds of millions in DoD grants was for exactly?