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I thought you were going somewhere else until the last paragraph. The tools of violence that the police have access to aren't actually very good at their jobs: Guns cause deadly wounds and may unintentionally hit bystanders, Tasers are much less reliable, and hand-to-hand fights (possibly with batons) inherently involve risk to the officers.
A remote-controlled (not autonomous) bot has the potential to be safer and more targeted than a gun, more incapacitating than a taser, and less risky than getting personally involved. If the police had an effective bot (that doesn't exist in 2024) in the subway, they could've simply arrested him after he started brandishing the knife. No muss, no fuss, and only the only risk is some equipment damage if he gets a good stab in.
Right, I’m in favor of developing and utilizing remote-controlled arrest robots in the short term to see how well that goes; I agree that it would significantly reduce a number of risks and make the arrest process far more efficient and effective. If that goes well enough, we might not even need to progress to autonomous robocops! My general point is that policing right now is severely hampered by the fallibility and vulnerability of flesh-and-blood beat cops, and that a move toward more automation and robotics in policing strikes me as a highly promising development.
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