At least to me, there's a huge difference between working for a defense contractor and expecting your creations to be used in the national interest, and seeing your creations turned against your fellow citizens for depraved political stunts.
And as for what they maybe should have been able to see coming? I'm not going to put them down for their realizations coming a bit late. Doing that is much better than simply doubling down in denial, as if this result had been their intent all along.
(And yeah yeah, forever war. I've personally never worked for a defense contractor, quite deliberately. But I can still understand the perspective of someone who does)
So I’d love to hear from one of those employees about how they imagined those use cases.
Either they have huge cognitive dissonance, or I’m too cynical, because I cannot imagine a situation where a robot designed to remotely spy (sorry, assess) or apply force, lethal or not (aka de-escalate tense situations), wouldn't end up being used for the wrong things.
if you send in a mobile robot first, then you don't have to send in a human to scout. You can find the suspect and assess the situation without having to put a human at risk (and therefore in a situation where they have to shoot to defend themselves). This helps both the cop and the suspect remain alive.
So just wait until we see jousting RobotWars in our streets with cop-aligned killer K9 troops fighting to the death with the Crips and Bloods remote-control drone dawgz.
* during COVID period Singapore used BD dogs to walk parks and remind people to maintain social distance,
* BD dogs are used to remotely assess bomb threats and structurally dubious / unsafe sites for victims / dangers to rescuers.
As for the closing thought above, it's a sad truth that many many things "end up being used for the wrong things" .. whether that's innuendo or fascist over reach.