Robots have been keeping police officers safe for years by disposing of bombs and assisting in hostage situations, but a rapid increase in technology could trigger a robot revolution over the next decade.

Robots are already being weaponized: In 2014, a South African company started selling drones that could shoot 80 pepper balls per second, and police in North Dakota have been cleared to use a type of drone that is armed with tear gas and Tasers. Police use of Tasers—they’re designed to be nonlethal but can trigger cardiac arrest—killed 540 Americans from 2001 to 2013, according to Amnesty International. Right now, this technology requires an operator to remotely control the robots and the weapons. But autonomous weaponized robots are already being used by the Israeli military to patrol that nation’s borders, and a Texas company has created a drone to hover over private property and, without human instruction, fire a Taser dart to keep a potential intruder under shock until the authorities arrive. Imagine a convergence in technology that also gives these robots facial-recognition capability. Given the right circumstances, such as a terrorist threat, these robots could be rolled out in large numbers to protect citizens.

Connected to the cloud in order to work in tandem with other robots, they would be the perfect tools to ID and track large numbers of people from afar and from the air. The threat of future attacks would make these robots hard to put away again. And don’t forget the problems with all computerized devices: They can be hacked and used against the authorities or innocent victims. They can be spoofed about their location and crash into buildings. And they have already been used to commit crimes like theft, snooping anddrug smuggling. We shouldn’t stifle the onset of new technologies that could help humanity, but we need a bill of human technological rights to ensure our individual freedoms. Otherwise, I am predicting a gradual erosion of human rights such as freedom of movement, privacy and even life.

Noel Sharkey

Noel Sharkey is emeritus professor of robotics and artificial intelligence at the University of Sheffield in England.