A week after voting to allow local law enforcement to equip robots with potentially deadly explosives, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday reversed course, nixing a policy proposal that would have permitted robot-delivered lethal force "when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available."
The board backtracked from an initial 8–3 vote after noisy public outcry against "killer robots," with one supervisor, Gordon Mar, tweeting regret for his pro-robot vote because of "the clear and compelling civil liberties concerns." Initially, Mar said, he thought the proposal's guardrails were adequate, but he came to believe they were not. Moreover, he added, he doesn't think "removing the immediacy and humanity of taking a life and putting it behind a remote control is a reasonable step for a municipal police force."
