President Obama has officially made history for the number of days an American President has ordered flags to be flown at half staff. Sadly, as of late it seems that many human beings have given in to utter cowardice as they chose to visit hate, murder, and evil on society at large, and my sincere condolences go out to those affected by these incidents.
Terrorism isn’t new, but the way that police responded to the latest threat may be. This time, while the terrorist was busy being a terrorist, the Dallas Chief of Police David Brown decided to use a robot to avoid risking further loss of life. The Dallas Police strapped a pound of C4 to a robot, guided the robot toward the terrorist, and detonated the bomb to end the threat.
The implications here are far reaching. In addition to bombs, similar drones are capable of carrying tasers, water cannons, and possibly guns. What’s more, Even the most limited-government-minded of federal politicians have discussed using drones to drop bombs domestically to accomplish similar things.
While I offer no opinion on the use of such a robot in this case, I will say that if I were given the task of stopping the shooter myself, I could see how the idea of sending a robot instead would seem very appealing. I will also say that now seems like a great time to have a civil debate on the limits of when robots should be used in such situations.
The robots in this case were human controlled every step of the way, and that brings with it a certain level of ethical debate. If AI/The Singularity/Skynet is even possible, I still hold that it's not imminent. A more likely scenario for the next 5-10 years seems to be one where the robots of tomorrow could be a blend of AI and human control.
In other words, what if a robot were sent into a room with multiple terrorists holding hostages, and police were tempted to hand off part of the targeting process to the machine? That scenario may not be as far-fetched as it sounds, and it would bring with it an entirely different level of ethical debate.
