Axon, the company best known for developing the Taser, said Monday it is halting plans to develop a Taser-equipped drone after most of its ethics board resigned over the controversial project.
Axon founder and CEO Rick Smith said the company’s announcement last week, which sparked a rebuke from its artificial intelligence ethics board, was intended to “start a conversation about this. as a potential solution “. Smith said the subsequent discussion “provided us with a deeper appreciation of the complex and important considerations” around the topic.
As a result, “we are stopping work on this project and refocusing on getting even more involved with key groups to fully explore the best way forward,” he said. The development was first reported by Reuters.
The decision to abandon the project comes amid a debate over the use of weapons in schools after the deadly shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, with some Republican lawmakers suggesting that teachers he should be armed. Last week, Axon outlined a vision in which his “non-lethal drones” would be installed in public spaces and be able to stop mass shooters “in a matter of minutes,” Smith wrote in his message.
The board had voted 8-4 a few weeks ago to recommend that Axon not proceed with a Taser drone pilot and was concerned about the introduction of gun drones into color communities with excessive police.
But after the Uvalde shoots which killed 19 students and two teachers, the company announced that drone development was beginning. Smith told The Associated Press last week that he made the idea public in part because he was “catastrophically disappointed” by the response from police who did not move to kill the suspect for more than an hour.
“He begged the company”
The board issued a rare public disapproval of the project, saying it was a dangerous idea that went far beyond the initial proposal the board had reviewed for a Taser-equipped police drone. He said he had “asked the company to withdraw” before the announcement and that many of them believed he was “dealing with the tragedy of the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings”.
Smith had rejected the idea in an interview with the AP last week and said he was moving forward because he believed the Taser drone could be a viable solution to save lives. He said the idea should be shared as part of the public conversation about school safety and effective ways for police to deal with attackers safely.
On Monday, nine members of the ethics board, a highly respected group of technology, police and privacy experts, announced their resignation, saying they had “lost faith in Axon’s ability to be a responsible partner.”
“We wish it hadn’t been reached,” the statement said. “Each of us joined this board with the belief that we could influence the management of the company in ways that would help mitigate the damage that police technology can sow and better capture the benefits.”
“We tried from the beginning to get Axon to understand that his client should be the community that a police agency serves, not the police agency itself,” said Barry Friedman, a law professor at the board. New York University, in an interview. “It’s been a painful struggle to try to change the calculation there.”
Ethics Board Concerns
Friedman said one of the main concerns was Smith’s decision to go ahead with the plan and announce it publicly without properly listening to the concerns of board members.
“What’s the emergency? School shootings are a crisis. I agree,” Friedman said. “But Axon, with his best timeline, won’t come out with anything for a couple of years. Why was it necessary to move forward like that?”
“What Rick suggests is that a necessary public dialogue just jumped over the head of the board,” Friedman said.
In his statement, Smith said it was “unfortunate that some members of Axon’s ethics advisory committee have chosen to withdraw from participating directly in these matters before hearing or having the opportunity to address their technical questions “.
“We respect your choice and will continue to look for diverse perspectives to challenge our thinking and help guide other technology options,” Smith said.
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