415: Axon CEO Rick Smith shares his entrepreneurship journey and details how Axon has pursued its mission to protect life without taking life. The company began by selling TASERS to consumers as a way to incapacitate a threat without hurting them. However, when that failed to gain traction, the company began selling the weapon to police officers, which was a huge success. Later, the company pivoted to selling body-worn cameras backed by the cloud as a way to protect police officers and increase transparency between law enforcement and the public. We also discuss the future of facial recognition and AI in law enforcement, the Policing Technology Ethics Board the company has developed, Rick’s new book The End of Killing: How Our Newest Technologies Can Solve Humanity’s Oldest Problem, among other topics.
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“We can effectively double the world's police by eliminating 50 percent of their workload. We will do that through a combination of our cloud-connected sensors, our cloud software, and AI. I have set a goal that in the next 10 years, we will have non-lethal weapons that outperform police handguns. "
