Strangely, I prefer to be shot by a robot than a human cop. Either I had it coming or it was purely an accident. Either way, robots don't get qualified immunity and for some reason it feels less personal, perhaps because robots can't have malicious intent (yet!).

Yep, that’s strange.

The robot could also get hacked by a rouge (or not so rouge) agent attempting to kill you or someone else? At this point, and if these flying bombing robots actually start going around, I’m absolutely certain it will happen.

It could and would get hacked but would it be as often as cops injure and kill people today?

Compared to how many people exists in the world and how many cops there is, there’s really not that much of that happening. Media reporting is widely skewing people’s views.

Humans are messy and hard to change

Robots can be continuously iterated on.

Which can be kind of scary

I use to think so but noe I think unpredictable and cruel humans are scarier. You can debug/troubleshoot a machine but people's free will and complexity makes them dangerous.

If a robot sues me, I can sue its operator. If a person shoots me, they can claim an accident, self-defence,qualified immunity,etc... so robot operators have a good incentive to be right when they fire.

The scary part isn't the bots but who controls them.

These aren't autonomous - they require a human controller

San Francisco has police? I never see them. I’ve heard of way more friends who have been robbed and shot while going about their daily life. It sounds like a big hypothetical.

Shot? Really? Shootings are relatively rare in sf.

yeah but hypothetically, wouldn't you and your friends feel a lot safer if there were autonomous robots with explosives patrolling the street though?

I have walked in San Francisco for about 8 years now and haven't ever seen anyone get robbed or shot. Police, on the other hand, I see all the time.

can robots be dosed with illegal / legal substances? whammy ?!?

Did they really not watch RoboCop?!

The argument for this is that it removes the argument of "cops life in danger" which they think will reduce or eliminate shootings of unarmed suspects.

There are several arguments against this, but the one that concerns me most is that this turns police encounters into a video game which will dehumanize the people on the other end.