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Take a closer look at this post by Meghan O'Gieblyn, author of Interior States (Anchor, 2018).
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I’m disturbed by the fact that law enforcement agencies are increasingly using robots for neutralizing threats, surveillance, and hostage situations. Maybe I’ve just seen RoboCop too many times, but I’m wary of machines making crucial, life-or-death decisions—especially given how often actual human officers abuse their authority. Do I have any kind of moral obligation to obey a police robot?
—SUSPECT
WIRED’s spiritual advice columnist on policing, degrees of freedom, and dancing in the streets.
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| Photo: Sam Whitney; Getty Images |
Dear Suspect—
Hollywood has not been particularly optimistic about robots in positions of authority. RoboCop is just one example of the broader sci-fi canon that has burned into our minds the tragic consequences of relinquishing critical tasks to inflexible machines—robots whose prime directives are honored with a literalism that can turn lethal, who can blast a person to death but are confounded by a set of stairs. The message of these films is clear: Rigid automatons are incapable of the improvised solutions and moral nuance that’s so often required in moments of crisis.
It may have been this stereotype that led Boston Dynamics, some of whose robots are being incorporated into police departments, to release a video last December of its models dancing to the 1950s Contours hit “Do You Love Me.” Maybe you saw it? The robots included Atlas, an android that resembles a deconstructed storm trooper, and Spot, which served as inspiration for the killer dogbots in the “Metalhead” episode of Black Mirror. Neither machine seems to have been designed to quell fears about a robot takeover, so what better way to endear them to the public than to showcase their agility? And what better test of said agility than a skill considered so uniquely human that we invented a move designed to mock an automaton’s inability to do it (the Robot)? Watching the machines shuffle, shimmy, and twirl, it’s difficult to avoid seeing them as vibrant, embodied creatures, capable of the same flexibilities and sensitivities as ourselves...'
I realize, Suspect, that it’s difficult these days to believe that people, let alone systems, are capable of change. But it’s also true that humans maintain more than 28 degrees of freedom, and at least some of those choices might be worth preserving.
Faithfully,
Cloud
Source: WIRED
