Axon halts plans to make a drone equipped with a Taser

Work on a project to build drones with tasers has stopped. The board quit after the plan was announced.

A few weeks ago, the board voted 8-4 to recommend against moving forward with a pilot study for a stun gun-equipped drones. The nine board members wrote that the drones were to be used only in situations in which it might avoid a police officer using a firearm. They were working on a report about the measures the company should have in place if it declined to follow the recommendation.

Nine people said they were surprised by an announcement from the company last Thursday, nine days after 19 elementary school students and two teachers were killed in a mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas It wanted to incapacitate an active shooter in less than 60 seconds. The board was asked to re- engage and consider issuing further guidance.

According to Rick Smith, the drones could be used to prevent mass shooting. He imagined that drones would be stationed in school hallways and that they could enter rooms through the vent. The cost of the drones would have been around $1,000 a year.

Human monitoring and artificial intelligence would have been used to detect active shooter events. A human operator would have made the final decision on whether to fire a taser.

The resigning board members wrote that the type of surveillance would harm communities of color and other people who are over policed. The problem of mass shooting has no realistic chance of being solved with the taser-equipped drones. We all feel like we need to do something to stop the killings. There are far less harmful alternatives to elevating a tech-and-policing response.

The board members said they urged the company to back off. They wrote that the company charged ahead in a way that struck them as trading on the tragedy of the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings. It bypassed the company's own ethics board.

The goal of the announcement was to start a discussion about the use of drones with tasers. Smith acknowledged that their passion for finding new solutions to stop mass shootings led them to move quickly. In order to fully explore the best path forward, we are pausing work on this project and refocusing to engage with key constituencies.

In the past, the ethics board has succeeded in persuading a company to change course. The company decided not to use facial recognition in its police body cameras in 2019.