Originally published at: LAPD disarms sleeping man with its new $278,000 robot dog | Boing Boing
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The robot’s cost is about 5 social workers salary, though I’m sure it’s got at least a handler who’s also well paid. Though maybe the new robot overlords will be less violent than human cops.
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I’m pretty sure violent force takes less effort and resources than compassion…
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Yeah, whatever happened to leaders who decide not to do the easy things?
… not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone…
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Yeah I would rather see that money spent there, but if this is what it takes to keep the cops from shooting a sleeping man with a BB gun, so be it I guess.
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The first thing I’m thinking about is the Hound in Fahrenheit 451.
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So they went ahead with it.
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Quarter of a million dollars, and it doesn’t even have a stun ray?!
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I had to read all the way to the end to check whether the robot might have literally torn his arms off (nothing surprises me anymore).
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I wonder if anyone has used a taser on one of these yet?
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Amd if someone managed to break the robodog the police would be demanding overtime to attend its line-of-duty funeral
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… careful what you wish for
They might even be sincere.
One Dr. Carpenter wrote an interesting thesis studying the interaction between EOD personnel and their robots; and they tended to be far from dispassionate about them, often describing them either in terms of being extensions of their operators(self or colleagues) or in zoomorphic terms. They aren’t always happy with them; but they don’t seem to be being entirely truthful with themselves when they try to stay on-message about them being expendable tools that are valuable substitutes for human casualties.
Don’t anthropomorphise the robot. They don’t like that.
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See also the slamhound from Count Zero, or the Rat Things from Snow Crash… mmm, 700mph nuclear powered cyborg pitbull…
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