... Will be robots!

http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/11/27/...prison-guards/

What do you think about them using machines to keep track of prisoners? Is this a step in the right direction?

Do you have anything against them doing this? If so, what?

Robots currently are insecure and inacurate.
they tend to do stupid commands and very often make mistakes rather than humans.

Unless they are higly developed.

HEY GUYS LOOK I'M PLAYERID57; BLANKET STATEMENT, BLANKET EXCEPTION, COMPLETELY IGNORING SENSE, LOGIC, OR USEFUL POSTING PRACTISES.
Posting "Robots are x" or any equally inane pointless rubbish will result in an infraction, as it did with playerid.

Hrm. I do recall reading about a study where they'd programmed robots with basic 'ethical' guidelines (According to a priorities system, as I recall). I'm assuming these robots would be using something pretty similar, which should theoretically make them more consistent in dealing with the issues mentioned (aggression, suicidal behavior, etc.) than human guards.

Practically speaking, it's rather difficult to define what qualifies as "aggression", "suicidal behavior", etcetera, simply because we as people have a tendency to be rather varied in our expression. I suppose they could do it based on absolute threat to self/others.

In terms of ethics, it's worth noting that using human guards is a rather flawed system as well. In any sort of guard-prisoner power relation, there's going to be a pretty high potential for abuse, misuse of power, etcetera - see the Stanford Prison Experiment, which is pretty much the textbook example of this. So the consistency that I mentioned earlier would probably be a guiding factor here. Add to that the fact that human guards are very often in danger due to the very fact of them being human - there's apparently a relatively common thing where prisoners will spit at guards or otherwise attempt to get bodily fluids on them if they've got some sort of STI, guards get murdered, etcetera.

Obviously there's going to be a fair bit of development needed before robots can completely supplant humans as guards (And even then there'd pretty much have to be human surveillance - robot autonomy's got a looooooong way to go), but I can definitely see the reasons for heading in that direction.

Prison guards are suffering from same stress like prisoners themselves. It is a surrounding of constant tension and danger. Replacing them with robots is a benefit.
But robots of today surely couldn't compete with human in the guard duty with prisoners inside the prison.
You still have to relay on human reason and judgement in that segment.Robots of today are still just a tool, they can't do much more then their programming has set for them to do.
But, as a 'moving surveillance' in the prison yard, like stated in that text, they could be useful. Mixed with humans guards - it could work.

I would rather spammed nano-bots inside the prison to do surveillance of the prisoners and their talks (video and audio), little cheap buggers not much bigger then a roach, crawling around the prison, connected in wifi. That's more better option. You can't see them easily, and knowing that they might be watching an listening would sure suppress many criminal behaviors inside.

Totally irrelevant to the topic, but their robot design looks like R.O.B.

On topic, they don't actually have any physical duties by the sounds of it, they just perform monitoring services that humans may not be adequately equipped to do, e.g. the aforementioned mood-change detection. So it's not that radical of a change, it can be likened to installing new equipment like cameras in the prison. Guards still have to perform their guard duties, but they now have more equipment to help them perform it better (at least, that's hoped).

The ethics behind it are a little more intriguing. The actual installation of the robots in the prison is hardly interesting. However, they give indication that they don't plan on the robots taking over the guards' jobs, which means they won't likely get in a situation where they actually need to interact with a prisoner, peacefully or defensively. However, it's interesting to see if they will actually follow through with that statement, or if demand for putting humans in less risk results in something similar to a UAV: guard robots controlled by humans in a secure facility. This results in the question of whether guard safety trumps guard efficiency (robots are limited in some ways compared to humans), and a myriad of other possible dilemmas, most related to human interaction with prisoners being replaced with an iron facade that robots provide. And then there's the question of whether the anonymity of remote controlled robots could result in further abuse.

It's an interesting project by the Koreans, and I'm interested to see how they go about with it.

wow nice, but robot?
are you kidding meh they can error sometimes.
also The three robots cost $863,000 to build, for what ? i kow they smart. they can make a robot, but i think i prefer to use humannn for prison guards.


sorry bad english

I think its a horrible idea because they are machines. Machines malfunction.
And why build $863,000 Robots when we have so many people unemployed? It will cost half that to train 50 people and pay their cheques for a few years.

Also, prisoners are cunning. It won't take long before someone finds a way to take advantage of those robots and then all that money would have gone to waste.

Um.

?



And do you think if this a success, it might move on to other countries?