Arizona taser company Axon scraps plan to put one on a drone after ethics complaints

Axon, the company best known for the nonlethal Taser, announced Sunday that it would no longer be developing drones with Tasers on them after nine members of its ethics board resigned.

The Scottsdale, Arizona company issued a press release last week that it had “formally begun development of a non-lethal, remotely-operated TASER drone system as part of a long-term plan to stop mass shootings,” referring to the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde.

We need better solutions to a mass shooter than “another person with a gun,” said Axon CEO and founder Rick Smith in the statement.

“For this reason, we have elected to publicly engage communities and stakeholders, and develop a remotely operated, non-lethal drone system that we believe will be a more effective, immediate, humane, and ethical option to protect innocent people."

Smith backtracked on Sunday “in light of feedback,” one day before nine members of Axon’s AI Ethics Board issued a joint letter of resignation that revealed the board had voted 8-4 against the company moving forward with a Taser drone for police weeks ago and accused it of taking advantage of the current political climate.

“Before Axon’s announcement, we pleaded with the company to pull back,” they wrote on Monday.

“But the company charged ahead in a way that struck many of us as trading on the tragedy of the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings. Significantly for us, it bypassed Axon’s commitment to consult with the company’s own AI Ethics Board.”

The former board members said Smith’s intent to “entrench pre-positioned, Taser-equipped drones in a variety of schools and public spaces, to be activated in response to AI-powered persistent surveillance” was far beyond the original proposal to use them only in cases when it could safe an officer’s life (which they rejected).

The proposed system would also harm already-overpoliced minority communities and said such a drone violated the board’s principle that communities, not law enforcement, are Axon’s ultimate customers.

Smith denied the proposal was opportunistic in a recent Reddit AMA, despite mentioning both mass shootings in the original announcement.

A board member that chose not to resign told the New York Times he hoped to “try and mitigate any harms caused by” these kinds of developments by staying.