[spacKingChamath]

The headline makes it sound like the robot can make this decision but in reality this is just a RC car with a weapon attached to it that is still controlled by a human

[notmysql_]

The headline is not very misleading

[danielvaughn]

idk, my first thought was an autonomous machine - that's what my brain thinks when it thinks "robot".

[MattGrommes]

But I wonder if the decision requires the "robot" to have a human controller or can the police unilaterally expand the kind of devices they use to include more autonomous ones?

[xkcd-sucks]

In the USA, if I understand it correctly, it seems there is a lot of case law establishing criminal or civil liability for autonomous mechanical devices that kill or injure someone - Typically traps like tripwired guns, so it would be interesting to see how it applies to autonomous robots having some degree of "perception" and "judgement"

[giraffe_lady]

Do those cases apply to the police though? Qualified immunity is basically a separate, non-overlapping set of case law for police liability that also coincidentally almost always rules that they have none.

[blacksmith_tb]

Right, an RC bomb is not by itself too different from say a sniper, it's if this establishes a precedent for more autonomous lethal robots.

[givemeethekeys]

Sort of like calling in a targeted drone air strike on your own population.

[infamouscow]

"Suspect killed by robot was caused by computer glitch"

[autoexec]

"Report: AI misidentified black suspects as having a gun in 80% of deployments"