In Hollywood movies, robots are characters; they are often funny, charming, resourceful or even heroic. So naturally, in the movie Robocop, the title character was heroic, resourceful, and, to a degree, even funny and charming. Of course, in real life, robots have no personality; they are (as Isaac Asimov once observed) “high-speed morons” which will do anything they are instructed to do, no matter how stupid, destructive or violent, without the slightest delay due to judgment, instinct, empathy, ethical considerations, or other human factors. From the standpoint of rulers, then, real “robocops” would be ideal; they would inflict whatever violence they were instructed to inflict, using whatever criteria they were programmed to use, without an iota of conscience or personal ethics. They would “only follow orders” and faithfully “do their jobs” by carrying out the whims of the rulers, no matter how idiotic, abominable or mutually-contradictory, without a moment’s hesitation. So perhaps it’s a matter of judicial wishful thinking that in this century, US courts have increasingly ruled that cops are so robotically stupid that they are absolutely devoid of human moral judgment, and therefore cannot be held responsible for even the most flagrant violations of law, ethics or even basic common decency unless they are specifically instructed that the exact act, described in the most precise detail, is wrongful:
Two businessmen who [were robbed by] Fresno police [of] more than $225,000…are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to close a legal loophole that shields [cops] from liability. Under “qualified immunity” victims can only sue government officials for damages if they prove that their rights were violated and that those rights were “clearly established.” So when the two men, Micah Jessop and Brittan Ashjian, filed a civil rights lawsuit against the [robbers], their case was dismissed. “There was no clearly established law holding that officers violate the Fourth or Fourteenth Amendment when they steal property seized pursuant to a warrant,” the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled in September…Ashjian told the Fresno Bee last year…“if the police have a search warrant that’s valid, they could steal your things and you don’t have the ability to pursue it…I am about as pro cop as anybody, but what happened doesn’t make any sense”…It’s really too bad that we can’t, through some super-scientific reprogramming of the brains of these supposed “heroes”, force them to limit their depradations to judges, politicians, and other “pro cop” douchebags. Alas, some things exist only in science fiction.
