No Justice, No Robots: Taking a Hard Look at Roboticist-Police Collaborations

Tom Williams and Kerstin Haring

HRI Workshop on Inclusive HRI II Equity and Diversity in Design, Application, Methods, and Community

Collaborations with law enforcement institutions impose risks, both for the general public and for the field of Robotics. We take a hard look at ethical justifications and risk by collaboration with law enforcement agencies in the U.S. and outline considerations for researchers on what to examine before entering in a collaboration. Using Trust frameworks from AI Ethics, we argue that collaborations with law enforcement present not only risks of technology misuse, but also risks of legitimizing bad actors.