See Spot. See Spot Run. See Spot Catch Crooks: Meet the LAPD's Robot

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Technology is changing the way people do things so quickly and so dramatically that it’s getting hard to keep up. Even law enforcement isn’t immune to a high-tech upgrade. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) has made use of K-9 units for years, but their newest acquisition is something different. “Spot” is a 70-pound robotic dog, one capable of a lot of the tasks that might otherwise have to be done by officers:

The Los Angeles Police Department is defending their new robot dog, promising it will never be weaponized after critics of the new apparatus vocalized concerns about its effects on communities, according to a report.

The four-legged machine named “Spot” was designed by Boston Dynamics. It is akin to a Golden Retriever in size and agility, and weighs about 70 pounds, as reported by KTLA.

Spot can open doors, pick up objects, drag items weighing up to 50 pounds and can easily traverse difficult terrain.

That promise, that Spot will “never be weaponized” coming as it does from the LAPD, makes it virtually certain that one day Spot will be weaponized.

They could always fit it out with a flamethrower.

Spot is not, however, autonomous; no questionable artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be involved. But even as a remote-controlled robot, Spot has already done some good work, the International Business Times piece (linked above) shared::

Earlier this year, Spot was deployed to an incident of an armed man barricaded on an L.A. Metro bus. Spot was able to get onto the bus, identify the weapon and take it away from the suspect so that police were able to detain them without further risk.

However, others fear that the robot dog could be seen as a symbol of militarization to minority and low-income communities.

“I think that people are concerned in our communities because Spot follows a long and flawed history of predictive policing in Los Angeles,” Brittany Friedman, assistant professor of USC’s Sociology Department, told KTLA.

So, a robot dog could be racist? That seems unlikely. Of course, the operator might conceivably be racist. There are complainers, after all, who seem to find racists under every flat rock. But if the operator is racist, that has nothing to do with the dog. Could an autonomous AI robot dog be racist? That, one would suppose, depends on the programmer – and how good the AI is. Current examples of military AI have been, shall we say, underwhelming.

New York also had a robot dog – no flamethrower – but stopped using it after it was deployed into public housing, for some reason. Apparently, people in public housing are more easily intimidated by robot dogs than the general run of the population. Or maybe there was a parasite issue; maybe the New York robot dog had robot-ticks.

But despite New York’s unfortunate experience, Los Angeles seems determined to press ahead, no matter how many would-be Spot removers are in the City of Angels. The LAPD is waging a media campaign to defend their robot dog.