How would you feel if a robot was patrolling your streets, waiting and watching to catch anti-social behaviour? 🧐
Well it’s a reality currently being faced by citizens in Singapore 🇸🇬
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Dubbed "Xavier," the robots are equipped with seven cameras that enable them to detect "undesirable social behaviour" 📸
They initially patrolled a housing estate and a shopping centre as part of a 3-week trial in September
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So what exactly is the anti-social behaviour that these bots are on the lookout for? 🤔
It could be smoking in an unauthorised area, incorrectly parking your bike or not respecting social distancing 🚭
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According to project manager Michael Lim, these machines are a new weapon against insecurity 🔐
"If the robot is around and something happens, the people in the control room will have a trace and will be able to see what happened” 👀
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But there are deep privacy concerns surrounding Xavier 🔏
"It reminds me of Robocop," one citizen said. "It brings to mind a dystopian world of robots... I'm just a bit hesitant about that kind of concept" 🤖
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What do you think about ‘Xavier’?
- It’s a useful tool7.8%
- It needs to go92.2%
22,122 votesFinal results
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Singapore is frequently criticised for curbing civil liberties and people are accustomed to tight controls, but there is still growing unease at intrusive tech 😟
In an island of 5.5 million people there are 90,000 police cameras and that number is set to double by 2030 📹
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And it is not just Singapore. In Hawaii there was uproar over the use of robot police ‘dogs’ to scan homeless people’s eyes as a safer way to ‘check for COVID-19 symptoms’ 🐕
Civil rights advocates called it dehumanising 👇
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And what’s concerning some digital rights activists is the lack of reaction from people in Singapore 🤷♂️
“What's more dystopian for me is that it is normalised and that people are not responding much to this at all..."
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