robo cops invade
The 3-foot-tall patrol robot roams a block in the Windsor Park neighborhood thanks to a collaboration between Austin-based CTX Patrol Service and Dax, a robotics company located in Oregon.
The little guy seems friendly enough. Short, squat, with big, blue eyes only the heartless wouldn’t fall for, and cute little caterpillar treads for feet.
Austin was recently introduced to Daxbot, or Palmer, as its handlers told a KVUE reporter. The 3-foot-tall robot patrols a block in the Windsor Park neighborhood, watching for any suspicious human activity worth reporting to police, through a collaboration between Austin-based CTX Patrol Service and Dax, a robotics company located in Oregon.
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Despite looking like our next favorite Pixar creation, this pint-sized gizmo is equipped with some of the most sophisticated artificial intelligence technology on the market today. Daxbots come facial recognition-ready, but a company representative assured me this one is not equipped with it.
The robot is “essentially a mobile camera,” that is “particularly effective in mixed-use environments, where public trust and need must be balanced with strong security enforcement,” Hobert Crittenden, director of operations at CTX Patrol Service, told me. His company was not required to obtain authorization from City Hall to put Daxbot on the street.
A policy of no permit needed to put a crime fighting machine on the streets should set off alarm bells. A 2020 city resolution bans the use of facial recognition technology by both Austin police and “private corporations on City property.” But the sidewalk and street are not considered "city property" as it relates to the resolution, a city spokesperson told me.
I appreciate concerns about public safety, and I'm open to new and innovative solutions to maintaining it. But as with any new technology, from motor cars to social media and everything in between, I have to urge the creation and implementation of significant guardrails as part of the rollout, rather than in hindsight. Seatbelts don’t do much after the crash.
The racial bias in facial recognition has been studied and documented for years, but the tech doesn't seem to have gotten any better. In April, a Black man spent two days in a New York City jail after AI linked his face to a suspect eight inches shorter and 70 pounds lighter than he is. One glitch can irreversibly affect a life.
To be clear, Windsor Park is not overrun with automatons tracking citizens’ every move, but the bot is one of “quite a few” that Crittenden said CTX Patrol has deployed around the city. Others are stationed in Central and South Austin, he said, though he declined to provide more details about them.
History tells us simply having a policy against tech abuses isn't enough. Last year, The Washington Post reported that some members of the Austin Police Department had sidestepped the city's ban on facial recognition software by asking their peers at the Leander Police Department to run images through its program.
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I spoke with one Windsor Park resident who was unperturbed by the bot in her neighborhood. She even expressed sympathy for the “poor thing” that she has seen get knocked over and hit by cars. Such a reaction is precisely the point of anthropomorphizing security technology, according to Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.
“We leave people more sympathetic to the technology than the human beings it’s hurting,” he said. A knee-high bucket of bolts with a winning smile may seem harmless, he said, “but the thing people have to remember is that surveillance is often the precursor to state violence.”
Surveillance companies collect “unprecedented amounts of information about how people live their lives,” Cahn said, and it’s “something that poses a threat to all of us.”
Now City Hall is toying with the idea of putting more AI in public life. A proposal to install AI-powered security cameras in city parks was pulled from two recent City Council agendas after a group of activists expressed opposition. Council members should take their concerns seriously. Future Austinites will appreciate the prescience.
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Austin has made a name for itself as a high-tech testing ground. But with AI-powered cameras enabling food delivery, taxi rides and, now, public safety, we the guinea pigs need to know our elected officials are doing their utmost to protect people from its misuse.
This should start, at the very least, with an all-out ban on private companies using automated facial recognition technology in the public right of way.
And the ban should be accompanied by tough fines for violations that are calculated as a percentage of a company's revenue. Proactive auditing of mobile camera technology is not feasible in what Cahn described as our "camera-rich society," and fines proportional to revenue will give the policy teeth that deter larger corporations from factoring penalties into the cost of doing business.
For someone falsely accused of a crime thanks to facial recognition, the damage is already done. The time to codify these protections for all is now.
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After all, before the Greeks burst from its belly, the Trojans looked upon the “gift” they were given and said, “That’s one fine-looking horse we got there.”
Cody Copeland is an editorial writer for the Austin American-Statesman.
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Cody Copeland is the Statesman’s editorial writer. At the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, he exposed flaws in a local redistricting plan, debunked claims of non-citizen voting, and pressed the sheriff to release video in a jail death case. Before that, he spent five years reporting from Mexico City, where his work helped bring attention to political prisoners later freed from falsified charges. A native Texan raised in New Mexico, Cody is a Texas Tech graduate and a former bilingual first-grade teacher at Jaime Padron Elementary School.
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