First robot cop to join Dubai Police by May, official says | Hacker News Reader

First robot cop to join Dubai Police by May, official says

gulfnews.com

55 pointstitusblair40 comments

There's some pretty scary stuff in that article:

> We planned for a security system for the future of the city to tackle future crimes. By 2025, Dubai will be one of the best five cities in the world on security level,” he added.

> By 2030, all police buildings will be 50 per cent self-power-generated and the country will build a DNA data bank. “By 2030, there will be no mysterious or unknown crimes in Dubai and the police will have the biggest DNA data bank in the country.”

> Meanwhile, Brigadier Khalid Nasser Al Razouqi, General Director of the Smart Services Department at Dubai Police, told Gulf News that the first police robot will join the force in May. “We are looking to make everything smart in Dubai Police. By 2030, we will have the first smart police station which won’t require human employees,” Brigadier Al Razouqi said.

If it wasn't on a reasonably reputable news source you'd think someone was pulling a prank. But then again, these Sheiks, Emirs and their cronies will only remain in power through the most draconian measures once the oil wealth dries up and they need to move now if they don't want to end up roughly like Nicolae Ceaușescu.

The cost of the police force will be a major factor if they want to stem the tide so they're planning accordingly.

>these Sheiks, Emirs and their cronies will only remain in power through the most draconian measures once the oil wealth dries up and they need to move now if they don't want to end up roughly like Nicolae Ceaușescu.

They've done pretty well at decoupling from reliance upon oil wealth in the country by turning Dubai into a sort of playground-sanctuary for the super-wealthy. Only ~30% of their GDP is oil/gas.

This appears to be part of that. Rich people like to feel secure in their paradise.

A country size gated community.

Point taken, but it's really more of a city-state isn't it?

Yes, but what Dubai does is leading for all of the UAE, it's 1/3rd of the population and a very large part of the total wealth.

Abu Dhabi (Nominally the capital) is about 1 million inhabitants and Dubai about 3, only a small fraction of all UAE inhabitants are citizens.

> They've done pretty well at decoupling from reliance upon oil wealth in to the country by turning Dubai into a sort of playground-sanctuary for the super-wealthy. Only ~30% of their GDP is oil/gas.

Way less. 30% is for the entire UAE. Only 2-3% of Dubai's GDP comes from oil and gas.

But how much of the wealth of those super-wealthy people is based on oil?

Regarding the DNA bank: I would like to know what information will they hold - just digital fingerprints of the DNA, or actual organic material. Depending on what is stored this could become a big target for various organizations to get a hold of.

Then next you have to worry about a) Someone abusing their power and using the information/robots against you for unfair reasons, or b) Hackers are constantly trying to break into various systems and I'm sure this bank/human-less-cop-force would attract some sort of attention.

To be fair though I have never planned to visit Dubai because of personal conflict of interests so hopefully if this does become a thing and is successful it stays in Dubai.

> But then again, these Sheiks, Emirs and their cronies will only remain in power through the most draconian measures once the oil wealth dries up

Unlike its neighbors, Dubai is not primarily an oil-driven economy. Only 2-3% of its GDP comes from oil and natural gas.

The devaluation of oil would impact Dubai, as the other Emirates and nearby countries are much more dependent on oil, but Dubai's economy has never really been based on oil, because Dubai had very little oil in the first place, and it was discovered very late.

Dubai has engaged on vast spending to ensure that it has other revenue sources other than oil. It required a massive bailout a few years ago from it's neighbour Abu Dhabi, whose wealth derives from oil:

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-emirates-dubai-debt-idUSBR...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/dubai/6...

Without this bailout I doubt Dubai would exist in anything close to it's current state.

I have to admit that I was one of the people who thought that when automation came to the police force, it would come to SWAT first a la Chappie[1]. Bulletproof robots armed with nonlethal weaponry. No SWAT teams putting infants in comas with flashbangs[2] or shooting people. Robots kick down the door and taze criminals.

However it makes a lot more sense like this, as a cost saving measure. It doesn't seem like these robots are meant to offer any real assistance. Rather dystopically they apparently scan faces to look for fugitives. Still- the more "routine" police work is automated, the better. Parking and speeding tickets being automatic are better for everyone. Robot cops that can actually offer assistance, particularly in many languages, would be great.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyy7y0QOK-0

[2] http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/22/us/georgia-indictment-flash-ba...

These kinds of advancements make me nervous, not because I'm a technophobe luddite, but because I don't think the implications and side effects have been thought through enough.

Of course the people making the decision to move forward do so with the assumption that they will always have power/control over the situation so the bad parts won't apply to them, but this may not be the case.

I didn't notice a name. I hope they go for Enforcement Droid 1. Only 208 models to go by 2043 then.

> I didn't notice a name

My vote is Chappie.

That's just begging for robot wars to jump out of TV and into the real world

Subtle RoboCop reference (this movie is now old enough that lots of HN-ers probably haven't seen it). ED-209 [1] [2] is an AI-driven competitor to RoboCop (cyborg/zombie).

"Your move, creep."

[1] http://robocop.wikia.com/wiki/Enforcement_Droid_Series_209

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrXfh4hENKs

"I'd buy that for a dollar!"

This sounds like a PR move more than anything else. What exactly is it going to do?

I do not understand this desire to endlessly fight crime. It is just the nature of some people. Crime will never cease, fighting it with an iron fist only prevents real problems from getting solved. Problems such as then homelessness, the hungry. Solve those problems and crime will decrease forever.

Dubai was built on slave labor... I don't think anyone there cares at all about homeless or hungry people, as long as they're in the outskirts or out of sight.

Here's a quora link: https://www.quora.com/To-what-degree-has-Dubai-been-built-by...

Google if you want a legitimate news source - I've been seeing articles since at least 2009 covering this issue and there are even books.

If you only think the poor become criminals you're wrong. I know 3 people who have gone to jail for big time crimes (drug trafficking and armed robbery) and they all came from wealthy and stable families.

> It is just the nature of some people.

and

> Solve those problems and crime will decrease forever.

Doesn't go together very well. If it's in their nature (whatever this means), wouldn't they just find other "excuses" to do crime?

Crime has an enormous cost on the economy that is mostly unseen. There's the obvious cost of prisons and the legal system. And the cost of door locks and security cameras and insurance, etc.

But more than that is the opportunity cost. People avoid cities and areas with high crime rates which decimates the economies of those areas. See "white flight" and all the problems it causes. People flee to the suburbs partially because they see it as safer. Industry and businesses leave too, making the problem even worse. I am having a great deal of trouble finding the source, but I've read this costs trillions of dollars. Lowering the crime rate would have enormous positive impact on society and the economy.

There's other costs too. Children basically aren't allowed outside anymore. Decades ago kids were allowed to play and explore freely all on their own. But now parents are so scared for their safety and won't let them leave the house. If you had ubiquitous surveillance, there would be no child abductions (or at least they would be quickly caught.) I think that alone would make it worth the cost.

>Problems such as then homelessness, the hungry. Solve those problems and crime will decrease forever.

I see no evidence of this. At least in first world countries, the majority of criminals are not starving or homeless.

Any takers on when the first ED-209 event will take place?

Actually this reminds me of a kids' cartoon I used to watch called C.O.P.S. (not to be confused with the Fox police reality show Cops). It was pretty cyberpunk for a kids' show and centered around an elite team of cybernetically enhanced police officers from the near future. In one episode, a city councilman had agitated for beat cops to be replaced with AI robots called Instant Justice Machines, presumably as a cost-saving measure. In reality he was on the take from the local criminal organization, whose activities the robots cheerfully ignored. Which highlights another failure mode of delegating police duty to robots: how do we know their programming matches up with our understanding of the law?

I fear the future when rulers no longer need the loyalty of the police or military, the last check on their power.

Such a future is not inevitable - the development and production of autonomous human-hostile machines can and should be banned with the same fervour as making biological weapons.

I'm skeptical that the robot will work as well as one might expect, but the real gem in this article is that Dubai is building a DNA bank. Let's see how that pans out.

> Let's see how that pans out.

You will know how well it works by who is not in it.

Reminds me of this story:

> Scott Simon notes the plight of a British citizen who has been sentenced to four years in prison in Dubai for having a microscopic amount of marijuana on the bottom of his shoe.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1884201...

This was written in March and it's June 1st now. So, did it happen?

Found this: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/06/01/first-robotic-cop...

May be it's Time to get revise this - https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/33-3051-police-and-sheriffs-...

"The announcement was made by Bin Sultan during a presentation at the 11 Best Police Practices Forum held in Dubai." "Brazilian football legend Ronaldinho also attended the forum" WTF?

Photo 2 in the slider

> A delegate trying his hand at virtual spiner training game at the 11th International Symposium for Best Police

It shows somebody with a Vive on his head and a big old sniper in his hands. Any more infos on that?

First tip to employing robot drones in your police force: Don't make them vulnerable to being pushed over.

I seriously doubt that thing would get up on its on recognizance, after a nice shove.

They might have to work on it's face and appearance a bit. It doesn't look very commanding or authoritative.

Nothing a baseball bat can't fix. Of course they will put re-arranging these robots external features at the same level as 'assaulting an officer'.

What does the robot do? Can it write tickets, arrest people, shoot, direct traffic?

Kind of a hollow article.

terrible article and I suspect it was written by a robot. You see this more an more with articles in mainstream press. The article consists of a catchy title with 8 paragraphs that restate the title different ways and never provide the detail a human reader would want

Meh, maybe they are catering to their main user base, the bot scrapers?

Can smart police be smart if they enforce ignorant and unjust laws?

bring on the robot criminals

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