Silicon Valley Creates Robocop that will Start Patrolling Streets this Year

a reply to: Silcone Synapse

Three teenagers will tackle it or somebody will throw a chain around it and drag it behind a car. Unless this thing shoots first then it doesn't stand a chance.

I see toilet paper or paint graffiti covering it.

These things are great, wear a mask/gloves and an IR light on your face and take a baseball bat or a gun to it.

Very vulnerable and expensive piece of machinery. They won't last.

a reply to: Silcone Synapse

I can see this thing lasting about 5 seconds, never mind giving a would-be perp 5 seconds to comply.

It'll take about that long to smash it to little bits and rob out the expensive parts to flog down the local black market.

Resistance isn't futile.

a reply to: Silcone Synapse

Hilarious. Must have taken many talented people to design that look.

originally posted by: lostbook
I think this won't work. Teenagers will have a field day with this machine. In a city like Detroit or Los Angeles this robot will be blown up or shot up in certain neighborhoods.

which brings gs us to phase 2- arming the droids with some type of weapon to defend itself with.

I wonder if they will be programed to kill unarmed,surrendering suspects like their human counter parts.A nightmare in the making to me.

originally posted by: TrueBrit
a reply to: Silcone Synapse

While I share your dismay at the creation of such an object as this, I feel that your targeting of nerds as the source of the problem could be considered to be a little unfair.

I don't think it's unfair at all. I think it's right on the money. This world we live in in which a very few people really understand how things work and most people don't even understand how the mouse they use to control their computer works has always been a high tech dystopia waiting to happen.

Remember. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Today, people who really understand technology have all the power. These people might just have more power than anyone ever has.

originally posted by: mrwiffler
They want to put them in schools. I live near a primary school and the kids sound like they are being massacred all day long.

Apart from the worrying orwellian nature of this thing, it sounds extremely impractical.

Could you imagine these things patrolling an elementary school on Halloween? Probably flip a bitch, short circuit, and have a total melt down.

Heh...it'll be programmed on that day to ignore all those carrying knives, axes and machetes..it won't bother to report back to base when it comes across people with these weapons stuck through or in their heads either...guess what night is going to be a riot if these things become widespread?

It looks nice and is probably expensive, but a well placed bin bag or swing of a bat would sort it out.
I'm not sure tech is the answer to be honest. Nothing like a normal secerity guard roaming the building.

a reply to: rhynouk
I would much rather an actual human taking care of security.
Its scary that if this takes off,young kids will know no different and for them robots telling them what to do and "protecting"them will become the norm.

But hey,I am a child of the 1980's,whaddaw I know?
Only the old ways,when folks talked to their neighbors and looked out for one another...blah blah Ignore my reminiscences.
Those days are gone,its brave new human 2.0 world or bust now.

A graffiti artists wet dream.

Imagine all the witty things you could paint and write on that thing.

a reply to: BrianFlanders

Well, I think that if one lives in a society where most people understand nothing about the world around them, then society needs to change, not the behaviour and intelligence of those amongst us who DO understand the basic function of things we see and interact with on a daily basis. In short, just because common sense is no longer common, does not mean that people who have some rudimentary intellect ought to be targeted because people do not understand what they have done.

There ARE persons out there, who use peoples ignorance in order to basically exert control over us as a species. But their tools, their most effective weapons, are not roving autonomous public order robots, but automated money systems, currencies based on debt rather than raw mineral wealth, and political systems which insist that the winner of any election is the best liar, rather than the best person for the job.

It is those things which are worth rising up against. People using their intelligence to create robots designed to be part of society is the least of our worries at this point. Really and honestly, it would be far better to aim your ire at the people who allow these technologies to be deployed in the first place, the public officials who ratify these things at the state and federal levels, than to lambast people for their ingenuity, and ability to apply technological solutions to problems that they are set.

originally posted by: Silcone Synapse
a reply to: rhynouk
I would much rather an actual human taking care of security.
Its scary that if this takes off,young kids will know no different and for them robots telling them what to do and "protecting"them will become the norm.

But hey,I am a child of the 1980's,whaddaw I know?
Only the old ways,when folks talked to their neighbors and looked out for one another...blah blah Ignore my reminiscences.
Those days are gone,its brave new human 2.0 world or bust now.

I don't know though, but somehow it does send a different message than letting your kids sit on Santa's lap, I mean no one thinks about Stranger Danger when it comes to Santa or the Easter Bunny.

And what about the creepy people dressed up like Disney characters, who knows if they have security cameras in their costumes. I can see it now...

Snow White : Sector 7-G, spotted male Caucasian, approximately 5 years-old, parents' names are on watch list.

HQ : Keep him under surveillance.

Would Disney ever come out and say they have been surveilling? BTW, I just made that up, but really, who knows?

a reply to: TrueBrit

I think you're forgetting that nerds gave us nuclear weapons, cluster bombs, naplam etc etc. Willing, amoral nerds are a big part of all that's bad with modern times.

Stupid Asian! Yeah let's live in a world where there are little robotic snitches on every corner waiting to turn us in. That thing shows up in my neighborhood it will have a .50 cal projectile flying through it!

a reply to: mrwiffler

Willing amoral nerds did not give us nuclear weapons, and it was not nerds who came up with the idea for cluster bombs. Nerds facing the most devastating global war ever seen on Earth, and under pressure from allied governments, gave us the nuclear bomb, and would not have weaponised the science they were so fond of under any other circumstance. Far from being amoral, the people who developed the theory and indeed some of the engineering that went into the first operational nuclear weapons, were so upset by the results of their labours, that they in fact spent the rest of their time in the lime light bashing the entire enterprise.

You forget, that the people who helped create that weapon, and more specifically those figures without whom it would not have been possible, and by that I am talking of Einstein, Oppenheimer, Bhors, and so on... these people did not take the detonation at Hiroshima, or Nagasaki well at all. You have to remember that Einstein wrote to Roosevelt to inform him of Nazi plans to enrich uranium in 1939. When they created the Manhattan Project, and assembled the scientific supergroup which did the legwork for the project, they were doing so on the express understanding, that if they did not do it, if they did not create the bomb, then the enemies of the free world would, and use them to totally subjugate the world, at which point the Nazis would be able to enact their murderous policies all across the globe, and would be unstoppable.

Context is important, and in this case the historical context means that you cannot judge these people to be amoral nerds, based on the results of their actions, only on their intent at the time of their actions. They had little choice but to create the atom bomb, and in the same position, I would do the same damned thing. I think it is a little short sighted to generalise in the way that you have, because out of context, all actions which result in a negative outcome for someone, could be considered to be the work of an amoral character. It is not always the case though, and I think it is important to recognise that.

originally posted by: mrwiffler
a reply to: TrueBrit

I think you're forgetting that nerds gave us nuclear weapons, cluster bombs, naplam etc etc. Willing, amoral nerds are a big part of all that's bad with modern times.

Aren't they also inventing robots for sex? I think I saw a documentary about that.