The End of Killing: How Our Newest Technologies Can Solve Humanity's Oldest Problem

A HIGHLY PROVOCATIVE TAKE ON KILLING AND VIOLENCE: Rick Smith believes that it should no longer be acceptable for people to kill one another. But the two sides of the gun control debate will continue to shout at each other without coming to agreement. Smith steps completely outside of the polarizing gun-control debate to posit a controversial new theory: that premeditated killing-a cop shooting a suspect or a mass shooting, for example-is something we can do away with using the right technological tools.ICONOCLASTIC, HIGH-PROFILE AUTHOR: Rick Smith is widely recognized as an iconoclast and a true innovator who takes an entrepreneurial approach to solving social problems, in the same vein as Elon Musk. He doesn't shy away from controversy, as you can see from a recently The New Yorker magazine feature article about him on August 28, 2018, called Can the Manufacturer of Tasers Provide the Answer to Police Abuse? He was recently invited by the CEO of the XPrize to propose an XPrize to address school shootings.A MANIFESTO BASED ON SMITH'S EXPERIENCE GRAPPLING WITH SOME OF THE BIGGEST, THORNIEST QUESTIONS OF OUR TIME: As the founder of Axon (formerly Taser Int'l), Rick Smith has spent the last twenty-five years of his life trying to make guns obsolete, a mission that he embarked on after two of his friends were shot in a parking lot after a traffic altercation. He has had to deal with big questions about how his technologies will affect people's lives, the justice system, and law enforcement: How far is too far when it comes to technology? What's the role of AI and how do we prevent its abuse? What happens when technologies don't work the way they planned or aren't received the way they ought to be?EXPLORATION OF CUTTING-EDGE TECHNOLOGY: Smith discusses the TASER and electrically charged weapons, but the book features a much wider array of technologists and researchers producing body cams and surveillance devices, using MRI technology for lie detection, and much more.