zlacker

If you fly a plane, drive a car or operate a factory, your livelihood and often your life depends on your constantly paying attention to the output of the software and making constant course-correcting adjustments if necessary. And the software itself often has the ability to avoid fatal errors built in. You rely on it in a narrow domain because it is highly reliable within that domain. For example, your vehicle's cruise control will generally not suddenly brake and swerve off the road so you can relax your levels of concentration to some extent. If it were only 52% likely to be maintaining your velocity and heading from moment to moment, you wouldn't trust it for a second.

Facial recognition software doesn't have the level of reliability that control software for mechanical systems has. And if a mistake is made, the consequences to the LEO have been historically minimal. Shoot first and ask questions later has been deemed acceptable conduct, so why not implicitly trust in the software? If it's right and you kill a terrorist, you're a hero. If it's wrong and you kill a civilian, the US Supreme Court has stated, "Where the officer has probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a threat of serious physical harm, either to the officer or to others, it is not constitutionally unreasonable to prevent escape by using deadly force." The software provides probable cause, the subject's life is thereby forfeit. From the perspective of the officer, seems a no-brainer.