There is no better summation of the Miami of today than an AI-powered “autonomous” police car.
You may not be aware, but Miami has convinced itself it’s America’s newest, hottest tech hub. At the same time, it is politically shifting to the right for the first time in nearly 40 years.
So, of course, when those two cultural forces combine, you get a lot of financially wasteful uselessness purely for aesthetics. In this case, under the dual guises of safety and innovation. It’s actually just a bunch of bulls**t, but as a resident, I can speak to how wonderful Miami is when you ignore its fascination with aesthetics that ring hollow.
Meet PUG, a dystopian surveillance machine that’s only a set of machine guns away from being the ED–209 from Robocop, and knowing Miami as well as I do, there are absolutely people behind the scene two had to be physically restrained from throwing some miniguns on what is currently a Waymo wrapped in Miami-Dade Police livery.
Miami Is Living Out a Robocop Fantasy With a Self-Driving, Drone-Launching Cop Car
PUG stands for Police Unmanned Ground Vehicle. The Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office unveiled the PUG as the first autonomous police patrol car in the country. It is complete with 360-degree cameras, drone-launching capabilities, license plate readers, thermal imaging, and, of course, AI, the buzzword of the day that tricks stupid people into thinking they’re gazing upon the fruits of progress.
The thing will actually be patrolling Miami streets, not autonomously just yet, and maybe never once the promotional novelty of it all wears off. The first year, a human deputy will sit inside it just to ensure it doesn’t go Christine on someone.
Eventually, the idea is to have the same patrolling the streets on its own, for 16 hours at a time, I guess solving crimes with a dog sidekick, and maybe even a chases down a perp, skids to the side while opening its back door, and swallowing up the perp into the car before closing the door and locking it and driving away to the station.
None of that s**t will happen. It will likely be used for PR and selfies, occasionally snapping pictures of traffic violators’ license plates with its cutting-edge license plate recognition technology, maybe firing off a drone for the heck of it.
Think of it as a very large, expensive, and dystopian Roomba. The PUG is less a Robocop and more of a mascot for Miami’s sad aspirations, acting like a city going through a midlife crisis. It is its version of the sports car and too-young girlfriend.
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