Robocop will no longer be lonely, police are looking to hire more
dubai — Thinking of applying for a job at Dubai Police? They do have a vacancy but they aren’t exactly looking to hire a human being like you. The Dubai Police want to employ a robot.
Khalid Alrazooqi, the general director of the e-services department at the Dubai Police, told Khaleej Times at the Knowledge Summit that they are keen on hiring the popular humanoid robot, Sophia, for their customer service team. She has the skills they require: strong interaction skills and artificial intelligence.
The Dubai Police already have a robot policeman on the team. This Robocop can speak in six different languages, answer questions, interact with humans, detect emotions and has a facial recognition software.
“We already have one robot in the Dubai Police. Now, there’s another opening to hire a robot instead of people. She’s (Sophia) is good for interacting with people and customer service,” Alrazooqi said. He added that the Dubai Police seek to hand over certain jobs to robots and let humans focus on the high-skilled jobs. He believes that robots can even manage prisons, traffic departments and customer service jobs for them, one day in the future.
Alrazooqi said: “The Dubai Police are looking to introduce all kinds of robots. One kind that we want is the robot that will manage communication and interaction with the people to protect the city 24/7. These robots won’t ask for sick leave or maternity leave and their accuracy is very high. Our people will focus on monitoring the city, solving crimes and providing better service to people, instead of doing the normal routine jobs. A lot of prisons could be managed by robots.”
He also insisted that even though the Dubai Police are now hiring a robot instead of a human for one job, it does not mean humans should be worried about unemployment due to AI.
“With AI systems coming up, many people are worried they are going to lose their jobs. They expect 7.1 million to lose their jobs by 2020, but on another hand, they expect to create 2.1 million new jobs. We have to work on the new generation. We have to hire highly skilled people.
“At the Dubai Police, too, we are looking to hire highly skilled people so we can concentrate more on security work. For the normal jobs, we will hire robots. There are advantages and disadvantages of using these kind of technologies. In the end, they will help humans live and work better,” he said.
The force has a strong focus on incorporating technology, especially drones and artificial intelligence, into their work. At Gitex Technology Week earlier this year, the Dubai Police displayed a flying hybrid drone-helicopter that can act as a flying police car.
However, Alrazooqi said that a lot of studies and research into artificial intelligence need to be carried out before AI machines take over some jobs.
sarwat@khaleejtimes.com