Editor’s Note (April 12, 2023): On Tuesday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) will deploy new robots and other devices, including the controversial “DigiDogs.” bottom. The NYPD first tried the bot in 2020, but it was discontinued in 2021 due to public backlash against its use.
Last year, the New York City Police Department (NYPD) began leasing dog-like robots. The robot is a spot model from Boston Dynamics, nicknamed the Digidog by the police. The Bronx hostage crisis and Manhattan public housing incidents are just a few examples of cops deploying robots.As the word spread (along with the photos and videos), there was a public backlash and eventually Elected Officials—quickly picked up steam. Some people objected to spending on robots. Others worried that its use would threaten civil liberties.
The NYPD abruptly ended its lease and stopped using the robot last month. However, other US police departments are testing their own Spot models. A spokesperson for Boston Dynamics said, “Spot is especially resourceful when it comes to tackling boring, dirty, and dangerous work.” Scientific American“Public safety initiatives, including police, are often faced with dangerous tasks such as inspecting bombs, investigating explosion and fire debris, and even escalating potentially dangerous situations.”
Complicating social and historical factors influenced the NYPD’s decision to remove Digidog from commission. “This just isn’t the right time [the NYPD] says David J. Gunkel, professor of communications at Northern Illinois University. He said at a time when we as a public are beginning to question what the police are doing, how they are funded, and what those money is being used for. He said he made this move. Scientific American We spoke with Gunkel about why people accept some machines and reject others, and whether the general public can fully embrace the idea of robotic cops.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
What influences how we humans feel about robots? cute robot seal parofor example, have shown strong negative reactions to Digidogs.
There is a combination of factors involved: the robot’s design, the context in which it is deployed, and the user’s contribution. Paro robots are designed to engage humans in more social activities. Boston Dynamics robots aren’t made to look like that. they don’t have faces. They are hairy and do not want to be hugged. Therefore, design can influence people’s reactions.
But the context of use is also very important.The same Boston Dynamics robots you saw are causing problems in New York [City] police, just [a few] Years ago, I got a lot of sympathy from humans. Boston His dynamics engineer was shown kicking the robot. People watch these videos online and say,bad spotThe robot elicited very different emotional responses than those elicited by police Digidog robots because of the circumstances in which it was used.
And finally, what do users do with these things? You can design the best robot in the world, but if your users don’t use it the way they expect it to, it can turn out to be something completely different.
Is there anything about robots in particular that makes humans nervous?
What really matters in robots is movement. And motion is what, in us humans, provokes a lot of expectations about what an object is. [psychologists] Fritz Heider and Marianne Simmel did their film studies with very simple animated characters. When this was shown to human subjects, humans gave humans individuality. [a] triangle pair [a] square. And the difference wasn’t that the shapes actually had a personality. The movement of robots in physical space is very important to us, because movement conveys a lot of information about social positioning and expectations.
Going back to the public backlash against the NYPD, why did people feel so strongly about this particular robot?
It’s also a lot of factors. One is the design itself. Robots are pretty impressive if you’ve seen a photo of them. It’s a little smaller than the robots you see in science fiction. But the way it travels through space gives it this very striking profile that looks eerie to most human observers.
There is also usage. It is now very famous that the NYPD used this robot, [at] Public housing project. I think the use of robots in that location was a very bad choice on the part of the NYPD. Because you are already talking about police officers entering public housing facilities with this huge technological object. [exacerbates the] It’s a huge power imbalance that already exists.
Third, there’s just timing. This is all happening in the wake of increased public scrutiny of policing and police practices, especially police militarization. [how] Police have responded to minority groups in a very different way than they have responded to white populations.
Some people used science fiction to criticize the DigiDog, referring to episodes of the TV show Black Mirror in which robot dogs hunt humans. Will it be done?
Science fiction questions are very important.The word robot comes from Czech work, as it appears in a 1920 stage play by Karel Čapek. So our very notion of “robot” is utterly bound up with science fiction, and inseparable from it.
And what the general public knows about robots is already predicted in science fiction. Because before you actually see robots in social reality, you see them in science fiction. This is called “SF prototyping”. A roboticist gets some mileage out of that, because he can often use sci-fi as a way to explain what they’re building and why.but they also fight [this prototyping] Because science fiction stories create expectations that inform how people will react to these things before they become social reality. So this is a double-edged sword. It offers an opportunity for explanation, but it also prevents us from fully understanding what reality is.
Will citizens finally be able to accept the use of robots in policing?
I think this is an evolving scenario. And the police department’s decision about how to integrate these or not will be very important. I would imagine that if the Digidog robot was used to rescue someone from a fire, it would have seen a very different reaction, as opposed to being brought into a housing project to aid police action. Had they been used as robots, I think we would have seen very different results. I think it depends a lot on the positioning of this device as to whether it will provide services.
