Key PointsTaser and body-camera maker Axon Enterprise hired Amazon Alexa Entertainment vice president Jeff Kunins as its new chief software executive.Axon’s founder and CEO Rick Smith, who started out building Tasers in his garage, calls Kunins “my software soulmate.”The former Amazon executive will be making big bets on the technologies that Axon thinks will be critical to the future of police work.📷Fullerton Police officer wears his Axon body camera on his chest while on patrol in Fullerton, California, on February 16, 2017. A proposed bill in the California legislature would ban law enforcement in the state from using facial recognition software and biometric scanners in body cameras. Axon body cameras do not use facial recognition software.MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images | MediaNews Group | Getty Images
For Axon Enterprise, having its new chief software executive accompany police officers on midnight ride-alongs and sit inside a 911 dispatch center isn’t just part of his job initiation. It’s also an indicator of where the company, known for Tasers, body-worn cameras and, more recently, enterprise software for law enforcement, is headed.
In September Jeff Kunins joined Axon from Amazon, where he was vice president of Alexa Entertainment. “He’s my software soulmate,” says Rick Smith, co-founder and CEO of the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company, which also has a Seattle office and has been drawing employees from big tech firms for the past few years.
“I came up building Taser weapons in my garage. As we extended into software and cameras, things I didn’t personally come up with, I didn’t have that level of personal expertise — that’s where Jeff fits in,” said Smith.
Kunins now oversees Axon’s software road map, the list of technologies Axon thinks will be big over the next decade. While this might include Alexa-like voice interaction for police — “For anyone handling a gun, the more we can get them hands-free, the better,” Smith said — it definitely includes leveraging artificial intelligence to make police work easier.
AI applications Axon has already developed include technology that automatically populates an officer’s police report after it captures driver’s license info with a body cam, and software that knows to instantly blur civilian faces on dash-cam video.
These types of applications, if they work well, will go a long way in bolstering Axon’s status as a market maker for law enforcement, a title it earned in the early 2000s when it started selling the Taser.
Source; https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/12/taser-maker-axons-amazon-alexa-exec-is-future-of-law-enforcement.html
Comments