A city councilmember wants to preemptively disarm the NYPD’s robot dogs.
Councilmember Jennifer Gutierrez said she planned to introduce a bill on Thursday that would prohibit the NYPD from deploying robots armed with weapons and using robots in a manner likely to cause physical injury.
The bill, dubbed the ASIMOV Act, is a nod to science fiction author Isaac Asimov, who coined the three laws of robotics. The first, he wrote, is that “a robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.”
“There is a clear difference between robots that help first responders do their jobs safely and robots that can injure or intimidate New Yorkers without accountability,” said Gutierrez, who represents parts of Williamsburg and Bushwick.
Gutierrez's bill would not apply to drones.
The NYPD’s robot dog, known as Spot the Digidog, was first introduced under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, but was later shelved after video of the droid running through a public housing complex circulated online, causing alarm.
A spokesperson for de Blasio at the time, Bill Neidhardt, told the New York Times that he was glad the dog was being “put down,” calling the robot creepy and alienating.
De Blasio's successor Eric Adams embraced the use of robots for public safety during his mayoralty and redeployed the NYPD's robot dog in 2023. Officials said the robot could be used in hostage negotiations and terrorist incidents.
At the time, then-NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said the department spent $750,000 to purchase two of the machines. He said they are remote-controlled and would be used in operations with the Emergency Service Unit.
Adams also deployed a cone-shaped security robot known as Knightscope K5 to patrol the Times Square subway station.
The department removed the robot from the station after a few months of service because it could not navigate stairs and was generally ineffective in improving public safety in the transit system.
In a statement, an NYPD spokesperson said the department uses robotics during critical incidents by facilitating communication, reducing human exposure to hazardous environments and safely resolving life-threatening incidents.
No NYPD robots are equipped with weapons, nor are they used in any way that is likely to cause physical injury, the statement said.
Mayor Adams briefly deployed a robot dubbed Knightscope K5 in the Times Square subway station.
The first law of robotics
Eleni Manis, the research director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, said Gutierrez’s bill addresses an important issue.
She noted that the safety guide for the Digidog calls for people to stand 2 meters from the robot, a difficult feat if the robots are ever deployed to a busy New York street.
“It is entirely warranted in wanting the NYPD to pledge not to use any robot in a manner that could cause physical injury,” Manis said.
Manis noted there is one confirmed instance of a U.S. police department using a robot to kill someone.
In that case, officers from the Dallas Police Department rigged an explosive to a robot and blew up a man who had shot and killed five police officers at a protest in the city in 2016.
The use of the killer robot touched off a national debate about whether they should be used by police and how they should be deployed.
Other local governments in the United States, such as San Francisco, have taken similar steps to block their police departments from using lethal robots, Manis said.
In 2016, the same model of cone-shaped security robot deployed to the Times Square subway station collided with a toddler at a California shopping mall, knocking him to the ground and causing minor injuries.
The robot debate took off again in the Bay Area in 2022, when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to allow the police department authority to use robots capable of killing someone in extraordinary circumstances to protect the lives of innocent people.
After pushback, including by the advocacy group “Stop Killer Robots,” the board voted to ban the use of the lethal automatons.
Manis said armed robots also raise the potential for officers controlling the gadgets from elsewhere to make critical decisions without understanding the circumstances.
“The concern is that officers who aren't actually on the ground with full awareness of the situation will be making life or death decisions,” she said.
