Artificial intelligence without borders

Last year, the United States Department of Homeland Security advertised the impending "deployment" on the US-Mexico border of "robot dogs". According to a celebratory feature article published on the department's website, the goal of the programme was to "force-multiply" the presence of US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as well as to "reduce human exposure to life-threatening hazards". In case there was any doubt as to which human lives were of concern, the article specified: "The American Southwest is a region that blends a harsh landscape, temperature extremes and various other non-environmental threats that can create dangerous obstacles for those who patrol the border." There is no denying that the US-Mexico border is an inhospitable place; just ask the countless refuge seekers who have died trying to navigate it, thanks in large part to ongoing US efforts to effectively criminalise the very right to asylum. And the terrain is becoming ever more hostile with the mad dash to run the entire world on artificial intelligence, border "security" operations to boot. The proliferation of AI-reliant surveillance technology has increasingly forced undocumented people into ever more dangerous territory, where "non-environmental threats" will apparently now also include canine robots.