What legal and ethical challenges does the use of autonomous systems in policing face as robots become more able to operate independently?
Background
"Mobility is the ability to move to/from locations quickly to prevent, detect or respond, including to access difficult locations safely to maximise intelligence and minimise risk.
We are interested in exploring how low-cost swarm robotics could expedite policing activities, such as crime scene analysis and help enable forensic specialists to concentrate on complex or central evidence. We anticipate that robotics will be particularly valuable in challenging and hard to reach locations, reducing the need for police officers to enter hazardous environments to rescue, treat casualties and bring the situation under control. As autonomy and AI improve, robots may become smarter and more able to operate independently of their operators, which may lead to complex ethical, operational, and legal challenges that we seek to understand."
Next steps
"We welcome your engagement with our ARIs in the following ways:
• If you have evidence that completely or partly supports or answers one of our ARIs, we invite you to share that with us. For any ongoing research relevant to policing and crime reduction, we encourage you to register your research on the College of Policing’s research projects map, which has been designed to promote collaboration and support requests for participants.
• If you are, or plan to be, carrying out research that relates to one of our ARIs, we’d like to hear about it. While we cannot respond to speculative approaches for research funding, we will where possible act to support your ambitions, including finding you policing partners where possible.
• If you are submitting a funding or grant application that aligns with one of our ARIs, we hope that referencing policing’s ARIs will help to strengthen your case for the possible public impact of the research.
• We will use the ARI document to structure our academic engagement, prioritise events and build new connections with external partners. We will be using our ARIs in our engagement with UKRI, and we will publish any opportunities for funding via our website https://science.police.uk/
Please send any correspondence and questions to [email protected], including ‘ARI’ in the subject heading."
Source
This question was published as part of the set of ARIs in this document:
Related UKRI funded projects
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"Ethical Review to Support Responsible AI in Policing - A Preliminary Study of West Midlands Police's Specialist Data Ethics Review Committee "
The deployment of AI and emerging technologies by the police, while promising more effective use of data for the prevention and detection of crime, brings with it considerable threats of disproportionality and interferen...
Funded by: AHRC
Lead research organisation: Northumbria University
Why might this be relevant?
The project specifically focuses on ethical challenges in AI policing, involving experts in law, computer science, and policing.
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Home Office The impact of Connected and Autonomous Vehicles on Policing service delivery UKRI Policy Fellowship
Each fellowship will last up to 18 months to cover: a 3-month inception phase for set up activity a 12-month placement with the host organisation an impact phase lasting up to 3 months Fellows will co-design projects a...
Funded by: ESRC
Lead research organisation: Keele University
Why might this be relevant?
Partially relevant as it focuses on the impact of autonomous vehicles on policing service delivery, not specifically on the legal and ethical challenges of autonomous systems in policing.
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Policing Academic Centre of Excellence
Context & challenge: The Scottish Policing Academic Centre of Excellence (SPACE) brings together interdisciplinary academic expertise in three key substantive themes: Safety, Prevention, and Analytics; underpin...
Funded by: ESRC
Lead research organisation: Edinburgh Napier University
Why might this be relevant?
The project focuses on strengthening policing policy and practice, which is related to the use of autonomous systems in policing.