San Francisco Votes To Give Police Robots a License To Kill

Isaac Asimov’s rules of robotics are pretty clear. “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.” What if the first two elements of that rule come into conflict? San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors has approved a policy to allow the city’s police to administer lethal force through remotely piloted robots. This usage is restricted to times “when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and officers cannot subdue the threat after using alternative force options or de-escalation tactics.”

This is the sort of discussion that local officials (and the rest of us citizens as well) will increasingly need to have as we decide how much authority to offer to the technology around us. In this debate, critics are already arguing that it offers police too much control to execute citizens without due process. Advocates, on the other hand, argue that provisions for this type of usage could be warranted in situations like a Dallas, Texas standoff where a robot with a bomb was used to kill a sniper who had already killed five police officers. Like most questions of this scale, there isn’t an easy answer.