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Axon wants to make taser drones for schools despite ethics board’s concerns
- SilkRoadie 4y agoEthics aside. I find it difficult to comprehend how a drone could compete with the agility of a person inside the confines of a building. Add the chaos of a shooting event… i don’t see how this will ever get off the ground.
- 323 4y ago> Researchers teach swarm of drones to navigate forest without crashing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9ZbipO8vxM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9ZbipO8vxM
- martin_a 4y agoI just wonder if a football body armor and a somewhat "better" helmet of any type will be enough to defend those drones. Maybe thick clothing is enough? Motorcycle protective gear? Does anybody know how well tasers handle such material?
- politician 4y agoIf you live in Seattle or Arizona, then definitely take an interview at Axon. The founder is like a hard-core sci-fi fan, so their offices are done up in this super gloss white plastic finish. In the Seattle office, at least, you exit the elevator into a spaceship complete with a working, mandatory airlock with face scanning to get into the office. Absolutely hilarious. Productwise, they have some interesting challenges like storing all of the police body cam video, making it searchable, and preparing it for court.
- stfp 4y agoJust unbelievable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GewIC_zsjWs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GewIC_zsjWs I felt like I was watching a bunch of 12 year olds having fun building the security/surveillance state. But now I understand how they came up with the taser drone idea.
- no_time 4y agoAll I see is open office hell. Might as well work in a shopping mall.
- robonerd 4y ago> The founder is like a hard-core sci-fi fan Not surprising, his company was originally named after an old science fiction story Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle; which he initialized to Taser.
- shortsightedsid 4y agoI worked at Axon for several years. Frankly, I liked the company culture. Rick's been pretty consistent over the years that he believes that technology can solve societal issues and that he sees things like Sci-Fi as something we need to invent. Rick's a Star Wars fan and there were several Star Wars oriented things in the past. The engineering culture within the company itself is pretty open and a lot of things are debated quite openly. Perhaps too openly for some; not that it's something to complain about. The bigger challenge they face isn't new hardware ideas. It's their software offering that need to do well. They pivoted from TASERs to Bodycams and now are investing heavily in software. If they get that right, then it's going to be a bigger impact on policing quality/consistency/standards than just the Hardware. Overall, I can say that it's been a good place to work. While not perfect (no company is), it's definitely pretty open to ideas and change.
- Robin_Message 4y agoThey sound a bit like Iain M. Banks' "slap drones", flying robots tasked with following around known criminals and preventing them from reoffending. This proposal seems awfully dystopian, but US schools apparently conduct surprise active shooter drills with simulated gunshots, so it feels like a choice between evils at this point. Proper ethical oversight would needed though, and I'm worried that mission creep is inevitable (remember e.g. tasers themselves were originally intended as "less lethal" and an alternative to a firearm, but are now used routinely to simply get compliance.)
- cldellow 4y ago> US schools apparently conduct surprise active shooter drills with simulated gunshots I thought this must be hyperbole, but holy crap. There's a story of an Oregon teacher who sued her school district when she was "shot" in 2013 in a surprise drill [1]. In 2021, Texas introduced but failed to pass a law requiring advance notice of simulated shooting drills [2]. That's craaaaaaazy to me. If the "arm the teachers" faction gets their way, do they stop doing these drills, or just accept a few more dead people from drills gone wrong? [1]: https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2015/04/teacher_terrified_by_surprise.html https://www.oregonlive.com/pacific-northwest-news/2015/04/te... [2]: https://legiscan.com/TX/drafts/HB1016/2021 https://legiscan.com/TX/drafts/HB1016/2021
- formerkrogemp 4y agoA lot of people exist in bubbles and don't seem to know what is it like for the average worker in the US. There's a ton of shit like this going on that the average high and middle income earner has no idea about.
- epgui 4y agoThe United States are messed up. I would never want to raise a family there.
- robonerd 4y ago> US schools apparently conduct surprise active shooter drills with simulated gunshots I didn't know that. It reminds me of this joke / supposition from the late comedian Trevor Moore: "What if governments learned from the MKUltra experiments in the 50's that trauma allows you to control people, so they purposely orchestrate disastrous events to keep their citizens afraid + dependent on them, and that's one of the reasons that mental illness has been rising? lol" https://twitter.com/itrevormoore/status/1400158963748917249 https://twitter.com/itrevormoore/status/1400158963748917249
- kieselguhr_kid 4y agoBefore I became the "respectable pillar of professional society" I am today, I was a smart-mouthed kid with a major anti-authority streak (that I retain to a lesser extent to this day). I think it was an essential part of my personal development. I shudder to think about how similar kids will be treated today, since they're definitely going to turn these on unruly students if deployed. Will they effectively stop mass shooters? I have my doubts, but they'll certainly make kids terrified to fuck up at school.
- buran77 4y agoThey will turn into exactly what they have to be turned into. A generation of people who obediently listen to authority without question, one used to being surveilled at all times, controlled at all times, getting directions rather than setting them. And that's the important part for the current generation of leaders. And it's not that such a drone would literally be effective against unruly students but because it will normalize the idea of pervasive surveillance, the students will internalize that it's absolutely normal and inescapable to be controlled and have all rules enforced on them at all times. They will get the occasional "bread and circus", they will be sold the illusion that they have freedoms, democracy, rights, and when those are routinely taken away from some people, none of the others will object because of all the points above.
- kodah 4y agoI actually disagree. I was the same kind of kid as OP, very punk rock and anti-authority. Kids do, in my experience, get that way for a reason. Usually it's seeing systemic abuse from a source a kid has, when you grow up it seems insignificant in retrospect, but at the time it likely looked like most major authorities do when you're an adult. That said, continuing to expose myself to systems and situations like that can easily diverge the path of becoming a "well adjusted adult". It is possible they could be broken and made subservient, but I think it's more likely you'll see even further rejection of the system, and rejection of it's future influence.
- buran77 4y ago
- Vladimof 4y agoWe probably should get a large fleet of these to check on the police force... Since they kill more people every year then mass shooters...
- vegetablepotpie 4y ago> “If the politicians fix the gun problem, I'll shelve this thing, and we'll move on and do other stuff,” Smith said. “But I have fairly low confidence they're gonna fix the problem. And so this is something that's within my control. That's something I can do that I think could make a big difference and is better than the status quo.” Technology does not solve problems, it transforms problems. What this drone would do is transform the problem of police response time into a problem of financing. My prediction is that this technology will end up in richer school districts first, then trickle down into less wealthy districts. When it arrives there it will be used more commonly as a tool to control students more than anything else.
- LanceH 4y agoWhy would the police limit it to schools? It could be used everywhere. Why limit it to a taser? They could start killing people with robots.
- kkfx 4y agoDid you know how much it cost a simple white noise generator, powerful enough to cut most wireless comms (i.e. all doable on small devices who can't use kW LF emissions)? That's even more important than moral considerations and irony on what future we heading to...
- robonerd 4y agoYou'll be triangulated down by boomer HAMs (they call it 'fox hunting', it's a sub-hobby for them) and slapped with a fine by the FCC.
- kkfx 4y agoSurely, but I doubt a shooter count on being not found... He/she just need to power on the device at a certain moment in time...
- UncleEntity 4y ago
- dghlsakjg 4y agoThey think that a noisy, fragile, clumsy vehicle armed with a limited range weapon will be at all helpful? They must know that this is a terrible use case. This looks like a naked money grab.
- 323 4y agoThey seem to work pretty well in Ukraine, grenades dropped from consumer drones.
- dylan604 4y agoForget the drone, just install taser deployment pods in the walls/ceilings of the classrooms that can only be activated if the school has entered an 'active shooter' mode. The designated authoritative figure (police, principal, anyone available) could then aim and fire without needing to know how to pilot a drone or wait for the drone to get on site. /s Edit: forgot the important sarcasm symbol
- kkfx 4y agoDid you know how a pair of scissors works on cables? Or a white noise generator from some online giant can effectively cut wireless coms? No need to be IT pro for such actions.
- dylan604 4y agoWhat in the world is this in response to? My sarcastic device would easily be secured in having cabling run through conduit in open spaces or through walls where applicable (if not also in conduit). What would wireless coms be involved other than another on a long list of reasons the proposed drone is just not viable.
- kkfx 4y agoSure, but the endpoint is itself strong enough to sustain a direct attack? Would a kill-chip in the neck (cfr Nikita and something other series) be better then? Or even better (cfr Hanna TV series) with the exceptional profiling and overpopulation directly hit all potential shooters following minority report, sorry, the hyper-score?
- dylan604 4y agothis really makes me think someone's bot has gotten loose again. We need tighter bot leash laws
- endymi0n 4y agoSchool schootings per capita (2009-2018): USA: 933 * 10^-10 Rest of World: 7 * 10^-10 Having a pretty good statistical significance comparing both buckets, school security and police armament for sure does not seem to have a positive relation with a reduction of shootings. Nobody wants to hear the solution, but it's pretty clear: If you want to reduce the number of gun fatalities in schools, you need to stop sending people there. (/s)
- ourmandave 4y ago“Listening to the debate, I remembered Sandy Hook. And what happens after these things, there's anger, there's outburst. And then a month later, nothing happens.” This problem won't end until you repeal or reinterpret the 2nd or amend the constitution. Everything else is a band aid.
- kmonsen 4y agoThe second amendment is really short. The current interpretation taken to its final conclusion (which will probably happen) is no limits at all. Open carry a loaded m16 in the middle of NYC? That's your right. The other way of reading it is that this is about well regulated militias, that the government cannot stop organized shooting practise. Anything beyond that is up to state or federal law. The final way of looking at it is that with standing armies of the US this is no longer needed, and perhaps slave owners from before 1800 perhaps did not have all the answers.
- sofixa 4y ago> and perhaps slave owners from before 1800 perhaps did not have all the answers. Until Americans realise that fetishising and religiously following the words of slaveowners from the 18th century isn't necessarily the best idea, nothing will change. It's weird how the "Constitution" is taken as the words of a deity that cannot be touched and cannot be wrong by some. Especially a bad and extremely ambiguous constitution like the American one, where the Supreme court has decided tons of things based on weird interpretations, instead of, you know, actually enacting laws and amending the constitution to add those things.
- k__ 4y agoWhat is the police actually doing these days?
- s5300 4y agoProtecting rich peoples things & fucking with minorities. As always. Also probably beating their spouses, statistics on that are through the roof.
- HarryHirsch 4y agoAsk the Chief of Police in Uvalde. He knows.
- seanmcdirmid 4y agoChief of police for Uvalde’s schools. I’m sure the chief of the police for the city is sweating bullets right now by all the people making the above mistake in wording.
- dontbenebby 4y agoI raised my eyebrows at the NPR version of this yesterday: https://www.npr.org/2022/06/04/1103066205/taser-armed-drones-school-shootings https://www.npr.org/2022/06/04/1103066205/taser-armed-drones... What happens when some kid breaks the end off a mechanical pencil, attaches a gum band, tapes that sucker up, and starts shooting BBs into the thing like they used to and it crashes onto some teacher's head and kills them[1]? I don't know if making literal zip guns during recess was a 90s Catholic school thing, but maybe don't do this. (Especially since I can remember when the teacher's union would shit the bed about sharp scissors or a single non lock blade less than 3 inch Swiss Army knife.) If you're that scared of your children, maybe you should rethink whether an arms race is the correct solution, especially since traumatized teens end up being anxious adults unsuited to be caregivers. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/nyregion/remote-controlled-copter-fatally-strikes-pilot-at-park.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/nyregion/remote-controlle...
- robonerd 4y agoWhen I was in public school, lots of people made those including me. I wouldn't call them zip-guns though, they're a form of improvised sling shot (or spear gun, if you use those sandwich toothpicks with the plastic frills on one end.) They're basically harmless, I don't see what the trouble is except for the 'distracted from class' angle. I don't think you could even shoot somebody's eye out with one, they're about as powerful as throwing a pebble by hand. I don't think you could crash a drone with one either.
- dontbenebby 4y ago>They're basically harmless They got you expelled and sent to a place that would make you need stitches if you stayed on the computer too long where I grew up. It's a weapon AND a tool, make no mistake.
- robonerd 4y agoJust to be clear, we're talking about combining a mechanical pencil and a rubber band to launch BBs, tooth picks, etc? These are "weapons" in the sense that nerf guns are, maybe enough to trigger hysterical zero tolerance rules but certainly not enough to actually threaten anybody with sense. They only have as much power as a rubber band. You can (and we did) get better results using just the rubber band stretched between your thumb and index finger. You can launch a pencil clear across the room like that.. but you could also just throw the pencil. Treating these as real weapons, let alone zip-guns, is an absolute farce. Zero tolerance means zero thought.
- satya71 4y agoI was just thinking an engineer with an iota of ethics understanding would have refused to work on this. Then I read this: > “proud” that the ethics advisory board disagreed with his decision to move ahead with the taser drone.
- tomxor 4y ago> human and AI monitoring, together with panic buttons and other local communication tools, can detect and ID a threat before a shot is fired Heh, I guess they thought Minority Report was an instructional video. "Keep your hands raised at all times to avoid accidental tasing".
- siruncledrew 4y agoA taser-drone looks like an expensive remedy designed to be a money-sucker than an actual solution. Instead of making schools safer, pretty soon we'll just have a bunch of defense companies lined up to sell snake-oil bandaid solutions to schools for millions of dollars, and meanwhile nothing will change.
- mkoubaa 4y agoAny school thats dumb enough to do this is going to have drones hacked and pointed at students or teachers