Police in Oakland want to arm the robot with a shotgun. What's the reason? That is the reality we live in today.
The Oakland police made a percussion actuated nonelectric disruptor a top priority last year.
PAN is a shotgun-shaped accessory attachment for wheeled robots, which are often used in war zones and by bomb squad.
A worrying new development in the use of potentially lethal machinery by police forces across the country is the fact that it can be loaded with explosives.
"One can imagine applications of this particular tool that may seem reasonable, but with a very few modifications, or even just different kinds," Liz O' Sullivan, CEO of the artificial intelligence bias-auditing startup Parity, told the Intercept.
The Oakland police department initially said they wouldn't put live bullets into the machine.
The department had a change of mind when drafting the rules.
The lieutenant who represented the department at the meeting told the committee that he didn't want to add a banned use.
The OaklandPD promised to only use the killing machines during certain catastrophic, high-risk, high-threat, mass casualty events.
There's no written definition of what those specific terms mean, so it's up to the police to interpret.
The subcommittee seems to have won out, but only to a degree, agreeing on language that forbids their use to kill humans.
The police can use pepper spray.
"If and when that time comes, each event will be assessed prior to such deployment."
The Oakland police's amended policy will have to be approved by the city council. It's likely that we'll see more of the same across the country as the OaklandPD isn't the only one pushing for the adoption of PAN.
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