
Massachusetts state police have been testing out Boston Dynamics' robot dog - anigbrowl
https://www.wbur.org/news/2019/11/25/boston-dynamics-robot-dog-massachusetts-state-police
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MisterTea
A protest starts, people take to the streets, hong kong style. The police
force, greatly outnumbered by the protestors, call in the "dogs". Armored
trucks pull up, the sides slide open revealing a large hydraulic rack with
dozens of "dogs" racked up and fully charged. Armed with tasers, pepper spray
and tear gas, these little robot dogs are a cops best friend. The machine
whirs to life, extends and unloads the "dogs" battle droid style, while a
controlling human uses a RTS like interface to move the dogs into a formation
and gives orders to begin herding the human protestors.

In seconds, dozens, maybe even hundreds of these mechanical beasts gallop
towards the protestors and begin a herding process not unlike a sheep dog. The
attack is swift and chaotic to the humans but highly organized and planned by
an AI system controlling them as a flock. Pepper spray and tear gas fills the
air as people are chased and intimidated by the mechanical creatures.
Protesters who dare attack the "dogs" are recorded by the dogs as they are all
equipped with real time video and charged with destruction of police property
after arrest. Facial recognition is used to locate high value targets such as
political figures or organizers. The terrorfied humans are quickly
disoriented, broken up and herded into groups. Surrounded on all sides by
robot dogs, their arms raised with their tear gas/pepper spray nozzles at the
ready. Finally the human police force rolls up in full riot gear and enough
plasticuffs to wrap around the earth.

The protestors are quietly arrested, no one was badly hurt, and not a single
officer was scratched in the roundup. Suddenly, a scared protestor bolts past
the line, prompting two dogs to instantly give chase and taser the offender.
Easy peasy. It's not even noon yet and the protest is fully quelled. The same
scene repeats itself all over the world. A man looks down from his ivory tower
on the scene below, smiles, and sips coffee from his alphabet security branded
mug. I weep for the future.

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anigbrowl
A lot of this happens already minus the robots. Conversely, protest
organizers/professional activists are rather more technologically
sophisticated and capable than might at first be apparent. As in many historic
military conflicts, the shock value of a new technology can be decisive at
first but has a short half-life.

~~~
MisterTea
The big difference here is that the robots have no fear or emotion. They won't
care for their safety and wont react to threats with fear. So throw all the
rocks, bottles and flaming bags of shit you want because these things are
going to come for you no matter what. That's the scary part, emotionless,
fearless machines.

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Merrill
>Other than Spot, state police has a permanent fleet of robots. As of 2017,
the bomb squad had 18 robotic platforms worth $1.8 million that are used on a
weekly basis, according to police records. Most of those are tracked robots,
not a legged robot like Spot.

>But there’s something different about Spot. Calo, the professor, acknowledged
there’s not a big operational difference between the robot dog and something
like a more typically robot-looking PackBot. But, he said, Spot feels
different. He pointed to a statement animal-rights group PETA put out, saying
that it’s not cruel to kick Spot, because it’s not a real dog.

The main difference seems to be that it looks like a dog instead of a
miniature tank. This may give it some advantages in rough terrain, navigating
stairs, etc.

Otherwise, it is just another remotely controlled vehicle.

~~~
icebraining
Spot is semi-autonomous, you can run a path once (including opening/closing
doors) and then have it repeat it alone, handling (simple) obstacles that
might appear.

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ovi256
Is there an ongoing development program for the procaine injector ?

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Animats
They found an application! After 25 years!

Probably not cost-effective, but at least it's getting used.

~~~
lnsru
If it can stop swatting, why not? A robot is better than scared and well armed
officer.

~~~
pluma
You'd think the solution to "scared" and well armed officers wouldn't be more
weapons.

Tasers were heralded as a way to reduce casualties because they were a less-
than-lethal replacement for guns, but now cops are still shooting unarmed
people dead and using tasers as legal torture devices.

US police doesn't exactly have a stellar track record when it comes to the
equation "problems + more equipment = less problems".

~~~
kuu
I'm not from US and I've never been there, but I think the problem is not only
about police abuse. When you're in a country where almost anyone can have a
weapon (and kind of the military range), the police also is having more risk
than in any other country...

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maxerickson
Most working police officers in the US probably haven't fired their weapon in
the line of duty:

[https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/08/a-closer-
lo...](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/08/a-closer-look-at-
police-officers-who-have-fired-their-weapon-on-duty/)

The idea that they are at particular risk from random people with weapons is
not supported by statistics.

The current level of violence pretty clearly (to me) justifies police having
access to weapons. It doesn't justify using them quickly.

~~~
kuu
> The idea that they are at particular risk from random people with weapons is
> not supported by statistics.

This may be true (I don't know), however one thing is the risk and the
perceived risk, and as humans, they're different.

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pmoriarty
This immediately made me think of the robot dog in F451.

~~~
dTal
My thought as well. But then, I finished it last night, so this is weirdly
timely.

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fit2rule
Soon as these things get rat-thing sized, I'm going to be investing heavily in
Reason. ;)

~~~
serf
"As we learned in Vietnam, high-powered weapons are so sensorily overwhelming
that they are similar to psychoactive drugs. Like LSD, which can convince
people they can fly--causing them to jump out of windows--weapons can make
people overconfident. Skewing their tactical judgement."

Just don't go taking over any aircraft carriers.

~~~
fit2rule
I guess its just a matter of time until someone builds man-portable particle
accelerators that can, indeed, take on an aircraft carrier. Its going to be a
very, very wild world to live in when that happens ..

Sci-Fi seems to be a key factor in the inspiration of engineers. I'm left
astounded at how quickly things proceed from "mm... feasible" to "on the
market".

~~~
ceejayoz
I'm more worried by the basement biology labs than the basement physics ones.

~~~
ryanmercer
Indeed, and it doesn't even have to be someone trying to do something
malicious like create a virus that targets a certain ethnic group. It's
completely possible that someone trying to create something as a novelty
causes some mutation that results in massive damage.

Say someone is trying to create a glowing plant (there are numerous companies
and individuals attempting to make these that glow bright enough to be
commercially viable) and they accidentally encourage some mutation that can
spread in the wild that ultimately results in creating a dead end in the
species with a bunch of plants that can only be cloned and you end up with a
precarious situation _cough_ like we have with Cavendish bananas _cough_.

Or what if someone is trying to cure their own disease and uses some bacteria
or virus to deliver the gene edit to themselves and it also happened to pick
up a mutation that makes it highly contagious to certain individuals and
causes some unintended issue.

Or someone wants to help sequester carbon so they try and engineer some
incredibly fast growing tree (I know of people actively looking into this) and
go plant some in the wild and create the next terrible invasive species like
kudzu.

Or someone actually sits there trying to intentionally create some super-
bacteria or super-virus because they are mentally unwell and hate the world
and creates something that makes the Spanish Flu's death count look like
amateur hour.

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simion314
Is someone doubting that the boston dynamics also has robots with guns/weapons
mounted that are tested in secret by military? The humanoid one what runs and
jumps with guns in hands is a nightmarish image.

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ricc
I wonder how much gunfire it can withstand.

~~~
swebs
They'd have to test it out in Chicago, not Massachusetts.

~~~
homonculus1
Massachusetts criminals have plenty of guns, if that's who these are actually
intended for.

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afroboy
The real moment that i'm waiting for is when the USA army will start putting
weapons over them and let them in the wild.

~~~
lostlogin
If anyone hasn’t seen the Black Mirror episode on this, S04E05, Metalhead,
please do. It’s apparently based on this robot too, and it’s terrifying.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalhead_(Black_Mirror)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metalhead_\(Black_Mirror\))

~~~
thundergolfer
That episode doesn't really explore the wider issue of autonomous weapons
though. It's just a straight-faced action episode. I wouldn't recommend people
watch it to "learn more" about things related to this article.

