A.I. with a badge?

With the world’s first all-tech officer running (or is it driving? rolling?) rogue on the streets the keyword “robot” might drive some popularity today.

Go ahead, search the Internet, see what you get – we’ll all wait. Tech nerds will love what they see, finding some news about the advancement of technology. The evolution of someone putting energy into triggering a set of mechanisms specifically placed for some metal parts to interact, clang, ding to complete some mundane task.

Others see the beginning of the apocalypse – we’re not here to go all “Matrix” or “Blade Runner” on you. So, let’s just leave that be.

While digging around check out IBM’s Cognitive Business site. You may recognize this from Watson’s play on Jeopardy game show. If memory serves it bested the current human champion by like a lot. It connected to the world’s Internet, searched what it could before anyone could buzz in and produces the answer. It assessed the situation, got input, searched known knowledge for direction, decided which data set was “true” and came out with a conclusion in milliseconds. There’s even a Sinister Bot “fluent only in sarcasm.” Like that’s a good thing.

Back to tapping into a knowledge bank really quickly to come up with a conclusion … Can you do that?

Yeah, you can – you make decisions all day long. Decisions that include the nuances, ability to adapt to the situation, etc.

In “Arnie”, this decision making software is applied to a stand-alone system. If you remember, Boston Dynamics posted a video of their latest work with Atlas back in February. After watching, peek at the DARPA Robotics Challenge video. At around the minute and a half mark, Atlas is seen being shoved by a hockey stick, later with a larger pole and is knocked down.

I honestly don’t know which is more enjoyable – watching this thing figure out how to get back up, rebalance, or traverse a wooded area alone.

We’ve got evidence of work towards being able to mobilize autonomously and some software to allow the illusion for decision making. Can a robot really do police work?

Actually, yeah.

Well, sort of.

Back in February 2014 (insane how far tech comes in a year), the Miami New Times put out an article on a drone that put a cop behind the controls. It had a live feed video and included some high-tech devices at the time. Self defense was a different concern. The intent here was to put the experience of disabled cops back on the street.

But that’s not really a robot doing police work.