KANSAS CITY, Mo. (KCTV) - A sight previously thought to be science fiction is very real at a southeast Kansas City shopping center. Instead of a police officer, a security robot has been patrolling sidewalks and shoppers are taking notice.
Since Marshall the robot has been on the job, shoppers say the experiences have completely changed when they come to these stores. The robot can spend 23 hours a day monitoring the parking lot from all angles which gives people a new sense of protection and ease they don’t always have when out.
Marshall took over security at Brywood Centre in April. Before that, Karen White noticed a lot of trouble outside the shopping center.
“Sometimes it’d be concerning for your car like someone could take it or something,” White said.
Knowing now that Marshall is always watching, the risk of crime does not worry her or others as much.
“It made it very better, like you can’t be in the parking lot without seeing the robot,” White continued. “So, I think it scared them off.”
I’ve made similar points in the past in discussions about robot soldiers going to war. There’s an upside to these things that people insist on overlooking; they follow their programming. If you program a robot soldier to never shoot at an ambulance, then it will never shoot at an ambulance even if it’s having a really bad day. Same here, if the security robot has been programmed never to leave the public sidewalk then it’ll never leave the public sidewalk.
It’s always possible for these sorts of things to be programed to do the wrong things, of course. But at least now we have the ability to audit that sort of thing.