Mock cop bot swats tot
A security robot has had an unpleasant run-in with a child in a California shopping mall. The parents of 16-month-old Harwin Teng say they were at the Stanford Shopping Center when the toddler ran into a 5-foot-tall 300lb Knightscope droid that then ran over the kid's foot. Other than some swelling in the foot and a scratch …
COMMENTS
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Thursday 14th July 2016 17:15 GMT Fatman
RE: I, for one, welcome our new robot mall-cop overlords...
Not me!!!!
And nor do I welcome their meatbag brothers.
I was assisting an electrician who was doing some re-wiring of a mall store, when we decided to eat lunch in. He was in his company uniform shirt, while I was wearing only a sweaty T shirt. The mall cop walked over to us and told me that "homeless people are not welcome", and that if I didn't leave, he would call the police and have me removed. I ignored him, and he did call the cops. We also called our boss, who arrived only to find me in the back seat of a patrol car.
He (our boss) went straight to the mall management and bitched like hell. They told the cops to let me go. The mall cop tried to apologize (one could see that he really didn't want to do it), as the apology was 'half hearted'. I told the mall management that the only apology that meant anything was one which included the immediate termination of the mall cop. They refused, and we went back to work, finishing the job for the store tenant.
The last I have heard of this mall was it was being torn down because of age, and a slow loss of tenants. I wonder why the tenants left?
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Thursday 14th July 2016 19:18 GMT allthecoolshortnamesweretaken
Lessons
I can't tell my son how every rich city first envied, and then bought, the ubiquitous automated gun networks the military developed to make occupations safe for the occupiers.
I could explain that the guns were taught, he has lived all of his life with machines that learn, but how could I explain that they were taught in a place where kids are seen as potential security threats?
All I can do is hold him tight when he mourns his classmates, and tell him his teachers are right, he should never run when there's a security alarm.