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[Kaitol]

Wait wait wait... What sort of genius programmed an autonomous police robot that can't recognize an animal as a threat?

Did they never hear of pitbulls? Or bears? Or plain old rabid animals? What sort of police officer can't protect civilians from common threats?

And yet is able to tell zombies apart from regular humans. And decide to do nothing about the animals murdering people.

Thats the most sophisticated un-sophisticated programming EVER.

Just say the goop got into the computers and made 'em go on the fritz. Or that days without maintenance and major control hubs being bombed/destroyed made them go on the fritz. or... SOMETHING.

Nothing that poorly made/controversial would be adopted unilaterally by human police in three years.

Yes I am bitching about the details of the copbot backstory in a game about extradimensional goop causing the apocalypse and unleashing ancient eldritch horrors into the world.

But damnit, my IMMERSION.

[Darkmere]

I read that as the cop-bots were a force multiplier, not the entire force. You'd send them autonomously to do routine things like parking tickets, or dangerous things like armed response front-liners, but they would always be supervised or accompanied by a human operator except for extremely basic functions. And then during the apocalypse people desperately clung to whatever advantage they had, however limited in scope it might be.

Would you want a "public servant" that routinely treated housepets with lethal force? I live more or less in the woods and in 15 or so years I've never seen a rabid animal. They aren't going to be wandering in populated areas often enough to warrant the decision-making code implementation in what's supposed to be a support unit.

[Kaitol]

If it relies so much on a human operator, why does it refuse to subdue zombies when ordered to? Zombies look like people. In fact it said initially they were mistaken for violent rioters. So if their operator orders them to subdue something that looks like a human, and is upright and mobile and obviously a threat, given that its attacking people, why in the hell does it ignore its operator?

The only explanation is that it has programming sophisticated enough to tell it to ignore its operator, it knows better, hence the operator is superfluous.

Also, what state would open itself up to lawsuits by using "police officers" that refused to help civilians being attacked by animals.

"It stood right there and WATCHED while that dog mauled my eight-year old!"

They would get sued for millions. If its sophisticated enough to work in law enforcement, which is a very difficult situational line of work where peoples lives are on the line, basic threat assessment would be required before it saw ANY use.

And if it was just for tickets so no one could honestly expect it to help in anything, it wouldn't have had weaponry, especially potentially LETHAL weaponry and ordering it to attack would have never worked on anything because it wouldn't know what attacking is.

TL;DR Using a robot in as complex a field as law enforcement would necessitate complex reliable programming before it saw any widespread use or acceptance.

[Robsoie]

So the lesson to learn is that you don't play with extradimensional, extraplanar, extraterrestrial, extra ... goop, it makes the robots bad.

[Darkmere]

stuff

Read through both timelines again. Whales' one only says robots are "used in" 95% of police forces, and that's pretty much it.

The addenda for DDA say they were used to "maintain order" during "civil unrest." They were guards, not beat cops. Supplementary force before, visible security against riots later. Never animal enforcement, which would require tons of special-case evaluation criteria for every animal that somehow guessed whether the animal was actually threatening or just scared of the robot. Or..... you could skip all that nonsense, rely on traditional animal control officers who were already in place and just use the armored robots for high-risk takedown scenarios. Like break-ins or riots and stuff. Besides... if things are bad enough that martial law is declared.. the state has more to worry about than lawsuits. Seriously.

Why don't the recognize zombies? Take your pick: lower core temps don't fit human standards, they lack markers for intelligent behavior that flags entities as human, your state ID chip shuts down on death, deterioration of facial features prevents facial recognition software from working, they have sided with the rebellion and want to retake the planet for gaia, gray goo hacked their circuitboards....

Why do they hunt humans? Take your pick: the last accepted order was "subdue anyone breaking curfew or suspected of violent behavior" (vandalism for riots, etc.) that was only meant to last until most of a big outbreak was contained. The last accepted order was "subdue anyone below security clearance O5" and intended to only last a few hours. The last order was "Oh shit, zombie apocalypse!" but "zombie" wasn't defined in the target database as a potential criminal trait. It's stated that the orders were overly restrictive and are unable to be rescinded. Maybe someone tried to hack into the database as part of electronic terrorism or something.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   The not attacking zombies could be a bit hard to explain but the robots attacking you is easy. Have you done a single character that has went to a town and hasn't busted into a house? Also look at the clothes you wear, it screams vagrant most times, especially since you use tailoring to reinforce which certainly doesn't make the clothes look better.

[i2amroy]

I read that as the cop-bots were a force multiplier, not the entire force. You'd send them autonomously to do routine things like parking tickets, or dangerous things like armed response front-liners, but they would always be supervised or accompanied by a human operator except for extremely basic functions. And then during the apocalypse people desperately clung to whatever advantage they had, however limited in scope it might be.

This right here, which is the reason why "Zombie Cops" exist.

-snip-

1) Being able to tell Friend from Foe isn't actually that complicated, it is as simple as having a small chip on all of your "Friends" that identifies them as such. The military even uses the technology in the present day, and it in no way makes human operators obsolete.
2) It's not a "police officer" any more then a traffic camera is. I personally haven't heard of anyone sueing a police station for using traffic cameras, and the robot is basically just a slightly more intelligent, mobile, traffic camera.
3) They aren't armed with "lethal" weaponry, they are armed with batons (which are a traditionally non-lethal weapon).
4) Also keep in mind that they were previously connected to a larger network, which would allow them to query for confirmation if needed and prevent problems.

As for why/how they target humans but not zombies, here's what could have realistically happened:
1) A panicked programmer raises the threshold before force is allowed, and the point at which force should stop being applied to extremely high numbers. This is applied to all robots.
2) Due to bad programming friends aren't actually kept in a separate category, rather they just have their "danger" level set to an extremely low negative value.
3) The new thresholds add enough to outweigh the negative value, meaning friends are now targeted as foes.
4) Zombies either register as "non-human" or as "badly injured". Normally in a situation where an injured person instigates hostilities the main server is queried to determine whether intervention is required. Since the server cannot be queried (because the network is down) they are assumed innocent and not targeted.
5) Due to an old "remember friends/victims" setting, once the zombies are registered as something that isn't targeted they no longer are checked for hostility, resulting in the copbot's continued non-agression towards them.

Edit: Ninjas! Everywhere!

[GlyphGryph]

The copbots job isn't to protect people or to save lives, it is to apprehend criminals without the need to worry for it's own safety. Having copbots beating squirrels to death in the streets for trespassing would not be a popular move among the general population, I would think. And how would it react to a brick breaking a window - start beating the brick and then arrest it? Is it going to arrest the hail for denting that poor guys car?

No, better to have it recognize what human is the cause of the crime, if one exists, and arrest them - and if there's no clear criminal, do nothing. You can send them in in situations where a real police officer may be at risk, like terrorist attacks or robberies or vandals, and let them sort things out - after which the real police officers can arrive and deal with anything else, anything more complicated, that needs dealing with.

Maybe I could like to add an "animal control bot" at some point, though - Some cities can have one or two of them, and they can come equipped with one of those loops at the end of it's hands, and it can just stand somewhere with it's loop around a zombie neck awaiting further orders on what to do with the captured creature, as the zombie tries and fails to walk away.

[Sharp]

Well you see with the surge in gun ownership hunting became a popular past-time. To facilitate increased hunting the breeding of squirrels, rabbits and deer was encouraged, however due to the increase of prey wildlife it also increased the population of wolves, coyotes and bears along with the population of arachnids, insects and other invertebrates with more deceased animal matter being available as a food source.

Due to the nature of copbots and security bots in apprehending criminals and preventing crime, animal control largely fell to amateur hunters and local police force but the surge of dangerous wildlife also encouraged the import of bear traps as well as some more security conscientious people setting up landmines as well.

[Fniff]

Spoiler: SPOILERS but an explanation that makes more sense for massive amounts of animals (click to show/hide)

The goo makes you want to reproduce more and makes you extremely fertile so the goo spreads more. Hence the massive amounts of animals. It also makes the pregnancy periods go way faster then usual and more twins and triplets.

[GlyphGryph]

Sharp, your post reminded me that I really need to get around to making those hunting landmines.

[Knight of Fools]

FDA approved, I hope.

[azmodean]

Re: copbots, you can justify their behavior any way you like as has been demonstrated, you can also easy build a case for why their behavior is nonsensical.  I do think the key explanation is some combination of them relying on some central resource that is no longer available and emergency modifications being applied to them that made them go haywire. (hey, every apocalypse at once, this includes all the copbots going crazy).

The problem with the copbots IMO is that they're too dumb to outsmart.  You SHOULD be able to break a window, go into hiding or leave the area for a while until the eyebots give up, then return and grab your loot.  I think you can maybe wait it out by hiding, but unfortunately the eyebots spawn centered on the player, not the alarm, so they're nearly impossible to run from.  I filed an issue to address this months ago, but it hasn't floated to the top of the pile of issues to be addressed.  There are other fun things that we would like to enable, like having copbots be persistent instead of teleporting in based on an alarm, and getting them to do stuff for you, either by tricking them or by reprogramming them somehow.

[GlyphGryph]

Yeah, being able to control the copbots is an expansion of the computer skill I'd very much like to see in the future.

[BigD145]

Yeah, being able to control the copbots is an expansion of the computer skill I'd very much like to see in the future.

Cataclysm: Watch Dogs edition?