Seeing Silicon: Robo cops are here. Do you trust them?
Robots are already part of my and your life. What will you do when confronted by an autonomous security robot late at night?
The other day, I was taking a post-dinner walk around the neighbourhood when I bumped into two security robots. One of them, a video camera contraption hanging on a post next to the sidewalk, chirped, “Hi, you’re being recorded.” Startled, I stopped. It wasn’t the rather bulky CCTV-replacement that had made me freeze.
In the darkness, an oval purple light gleamed beyond the sidewalk, in front of the office building. I squinted to see a 6-feet-tall security robot, moving towards me. At first, I thought it was eyeing me and I froze – surprised and fascinated. Could it see me? Was it recording me? A few moments later, the security robot turned away from me, whirring from one corner to the other, doing its rounds around the perimeter of the building.
Most American homes come with security cameras which sometimes warn you that you’re being recorded. It wasn’t the voice that had unsettled me, but a moving autonomous metal lump twice my size. Late at night, something moving around you, is a potential threat. There was no human manning it. If I walked closer to the office building, what would this security robot do? Will an alarm go off somewhere? Will something come out of its oblong metal body to apprehend me? Could it harm me – a human – in any way?
The autonomous security robot I had encountered on my night walk, as I later found out, belonged to an American company called Knightscope Inc which sells autonomous security robots with an aim to replace human guards at airports, residential communities, and buildings. The robot that I had seen and which had seen me – called the K5 – is one of their most advanced robots. It is loaded with tech – multiple cameras, microphone, heat sensor, light detection, motion sensor and wheels to walk around. It can record eye-level videos, detect, and interact with people and recognize license plates. It can also call emergency services and operate 24/7 in all kinds of weathers including hazardous ones, and can head to the charge station when it needs some juice.
So no, it could not attack me if I had laid a hand on its body. It would have merely frozen. And probably would have recorded my behaviour and logged it with appropriate priority levels in its system for humans to see in the morning.
I didn’t try, though. It was six feet tall – that was enough to deter me and keep to the sidewalk. This deterrence, the company’s website says, is a security strategy called ‘force multiplying physical deterrence’ where the mere visible, physical presence of a security robot is enough to stop potential troublemakers. Like it did for me. (Only for the first time though. What will happen when I encounter the security robot again? Knowing it cannot harm me?)
With AI advances, robotics has taken wings and is a growing market, projected to grow to $165.2 billion by the end of 2029. The securities robot market, which includes patrolling, monitoring, surveillance, and emergency response was at $2.3 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 12.6% per annum till 2030.
My cautious approach to autonomous robots was thanks to what I’ve seen and read in all those dystopian science fiction movies and books. In The Terminator, the cyborg assassin lands from the future to kill a young woman. In RoboCop, a terminally wounded cop is turned into a cyborg to deal with citizens. Human will is also subsumed in Universal Soldier where dead soldiers are brought to life as superhuman warriors. But perhaps the most endearing security robot of our times in literature has been created in The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells, where a former sentient killing machine gets addicted to family dramas and self-realises that it has the horrible desire to protect humans.
But if you move away from these dystopian imaginations that are ever-present in our lives, we are already surrounded by autonomous robots we trust and rely on. Around the corner from my co-working space, a Waymo autonomous car drives by, without any human driver carrying a human passenger to their destination. Autonomous cars have been around for three years now and has become a normal part of the Silicon Valley roads. I’m used to it and barely notice it now. I’m also used to the smart dishwasher in my house that can start automatically and the Google Nest which records the periphery of my friend’s house and alerts her of any movement - car or human - in the area.
Robots are already part of my and your life. And we love having them around. Yes, they can be a bit threatening when they’re six feet tall and on whirring on wheels, emerging from a dark street. But then, if I imagine a six-feet tall human confronting me on my post-dinner walk, that would be more threatening and unpredictable than a bot.
Knightscope recently announced contracts with 12 US states to deploy its K5 robot in offices and building security and even the biggest player out there. AI has infused fresh energy into autonomous robots and we’re on our way to sentience in machines.
Security robots, an important part of this evolution, are here to stay. We will live in an overprotected, over-recorded world and we will get used to bipedal bots and crawling bots running all around us busy on their task list. But then, we’re already surrounded by CCTVs and drones and gadgets recording us, remembering us, and adjusting to our unpredictability and desires. That future that some of us think as dystopian is already here.