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company

Axon Enterprise

American law-enforcement technology company (formerly TASER International) producing conducted-energy weapons, body-worn cameras, cloud evidence-management software (Evidence.com), and AI-based incident analysis. Largest US police body-camera vendor.

Track Record

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Axon proposed armed Taser-equipped police drones following 2022 Uvalde shooting, prompting AI ethics board mass resignation

Jun 6, 2022

On June 2, 2022 Axon CEO Rick Smith publicly proposed equipping police drones with Tasers as a non-lethal active-shooter response, citing the Uvalde school shooting. The proposal prompted nine of the twelve members of Axon's own AI Ethics Board to publicly resign on June 6, 2022, including Stanford internet scholar Barry Friedman and the ACLU's Jay Stanley. Axon paused the program within days but the episode highlighted gaps between corporate governance and product-development speed at law-enforcement-tech companies.

- AI Safety- Criminal Justice Reform- Corporate Governance
Sources: Reuters(opens in new tab)