Ford Is Planning Automated Police Cars And Skynet Is Coming For Us

The once-laughable dystopian future envisaged in James Cameron's The Terminator is creeping ever closer, with Ford's plans to put unprecedented power in the hands of machines
Ford Is Planning Automated Police Cars And Skynet Is Coming For Us

Ford is designing systems that would permit fully-automated police cars that could, with all the coldness of science, dish out arbitrary punishments to law-breaking drivers.

Patent applications from Ford reveal the company’s plans to automate police cars so that they could send warning messages direct to your car, issue fines and points penalties over the airwaves, chase offenders down or even take direct control of your car’s steering, brakes and throttle against your will.

Ford Is Planning Automated Police Cars And Skynet Is Coming For Us

Officers could sit on board if they wished, but they wouldn’t be needed. On-board artificial intelligence, described as ‘deep neural networks,’ would let the crafty car seek out the best places to hide in order to catch rule-benders and breakers in the act.

It would also be linked via the Internet to CCTV, number plate recognition cameras and static speed cameras, which could all help PC Ford zero in on its targets. The idea is to ‘free’ police staff to catch crims that computers never could. But… we can’t be the only ones who find this deeply unsettling, right?

Take this quote from The Times:

“Mark Skilton, of Warwick Business School, said that Ford’s patent was realistic. Autonomous police cars could also have the ability to take over the controls of suspect vehicles, he said.”

Soon there might not be much call for the good old Focus and Transit on police fleets
Soon there might not be much call for the good old Focus and Transit on…

Intriguingly, the documents describe the future Robocop(car) as dealing with infractions made not just by human-driven cars, but by automated ones as well. How would automated cars break the law without outright consciousness, and how could you possibly punish anyone for it if they did? A fine for the manufacturer, maybe? A slapped bumper for the car?

This one raises more questions than answers, and, frankly, for the sake of steering Earth clear of a The Terminator scenario, we kind of hope it doesn’t get built at all.

Source: The Times

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Comments

Valanti Demetriades

So if one of these cars commits a violation would another car chase it and if that car commits a violation would another one chase it and the cycle goes on forever and ever

01/30/2018 - 16:51 |
3 | 2
Anonymous

Will there be autonomous police trucks to tow arrested autonomous cars off to autonomous car prison?

01/30/2018 - 16:51 |
4 | 2
Teoman

I am ready.

01/30/2018 - 16:52 |
30 | 1
GTRTURTLE 🔰 🐢(Oo \ S K Y L I N E / oO) (Koen

Couldn’t you just keep running until the empty police car runs out of fuel?

01/30/2018 - 16:52 |
4 | 2

Lol picturing this is hilarious

01/31/2018 - 00:56 |
1 | 0
Anonymous

When you’re going 5 over the limit

01/30/2018 - 16:54 |
97 | 1
BenPaye(JDMSquad)(MX5Squad)(LFAsquad)(Subie Squad) (Rotary F

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Here lies best comment of the week

01/30/2018 - 17:05 |
4 | 2
CS55

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Ye pretty much…

01/30/2018 - 17:23 |
7 | 0
Robert Gracie

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

I think you just NAILED comment of the week!

01/31/2018 - 15:24 |
1 | 0
Ali Mahfooz

The 90s called. They say they have no clue what’s going on. 😂

01/30/2018 - 16:56 |
45 | 0

I didn’t get it.

01/31/2018 - 06:14 |
2 | 1
Anonymous

I hope you can hack these things.

01/30/2018 - 17:07 |
2 | 0
H5SKB4RU (Returned to CT)

As soon you put a signal jammer the fancy auto chaser gets trashed and useless, hell they wont even be able to control your car!

01/30/2018 - 17:07 |
16 | 0
[Flux]

You wanna know what this’ll lead to? An iRobot scenario. Hahahahaha, f*ck that.

01/30/2018 - 17:10 |
20 | 0
Anonymous

At least theres a good side.no blame will go on the driver if the car does manage to run over people.

01/30/2018 - 17:28 |
1 | 0