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Speaker 2: Matt Miller here in the Bloomberg Are we in the
Speaker 2: Bloomberg Business No, the Bloomberg Business Week Studio.
Speaker 3: Sometimes I get lost, get lost. I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's a big building, right we have twenty nine floors here.
Speaker 2: I'm here with Emily Graffeo. We're in for Tim and Carol,
Speaker 2: and we have with us right now Josh Isner, president
Speaker 2: of Axon, on the latest enhancements in public safety technology.
Speaker 2: They make Taser guns, they make body cameras, but they
Speaker 2: make a lot more than that, going beyond hardware into
Speaker 2: software as well. Josh, great to have you on the
Speaker 2: program with us. Talk to us first about the kind
Speaker 2: of non lethal tools that the police and I guess
Speaker 2: National Guard have to combat rioters, if you want to
Speaker 2: see them that way. We've heard a lot of talk
Speaker 2: out of the White House about an insurrection in Los Angeles,
Speaker 2: and obviously nobody wants fatalities. So what kind of equipment
Speaker 2: are you providing to these law enforcement officers to deal
Speaker 2: with unrest?
Speaker 4: Yeah, certainly, and we'll probably at least I will do
Speaker 4: my best to kind of stay out of the politics
Speaker 4: of the situation, focus on how we can keep people safe.
Speaker 4: And ultimately that's what the taser does. It's a less
Speaker 4: lethal tool, shoots out darts. Two of the darts connect
Speaker 4: to your body and conduct energy at the same waves
Speaker 4: that your brain sends to your muscles, and that's what
Speaker 4: causes your muscles to tense up or five seconds it's
Speaker 4: over and the police take you into custody. And so
Speaker 4: you know, in Greater LA, all of those departments, we're
Speaker 4: proud to be their partner in deploying less legal tools
Speaker 4: to them and and they have those the tools, you know,
Speaker 4: to hopefully safely de escalate some of what's going on.
Speaker 5: Josh, have you seen demand pick up? It's very short term,
Speaker 5: but just in the last several days, have you seen
Speaker 5: that demand at least coming from.
Speaker 4: LA Not not particularly only because the demand is already
Speaker 4: there from all of those customers, they certainly have seen
Speaker 4: riots like this historically, they've seen other, you know, applications
Speaker 4: for these. Generally, when you have any kind of physical
Speaker 4: threat to the officer or someone holding a knife, or
Speaker 4: or sometimes even something you know more deadly than that,
Speaker 4: there's there's very clear, you know, established use cases for
Speaker 4: for using a taser. So really proud of the fact
Speaker 4: that it didn't take something like this for our customers
Speaker 4: to already trust us and believe that there are use
Speaker 4: cases for our products.
Speaker 3: I will say that I have tased myself on a
Speaker 3: few occages. I have to say that.
Speaker 2: So years ago I was in a job, like a
Speaker 2: summer job, doing security and we had to use these tools,
Speaker 2: and our boss said, I want you to try it
Speaker 2: on yourself before you use it on anyone else.
Speaker 3: And I never actually ended up using it on anyone else,
Speaker 3: but I'm still here to talk about it. So, Josh,
Speaker 3: I wonder.
Speaker 2: About the importance of AI in the tools that you provide.
Speaker 2: Emily and I were talking earlier about and I don't
Speaker 2: know that we're there yet, but if you could use
Speaker 2: AI and facial recognition, for example, on a body cam
Speaker 2: or in smart glasses, then you'd give law enforcement officers
Speaker 2: maybe a little bit of an advantage.
Speaker 3: Have you thought about, I mean, I'm sure you've thought
Speaker 3: about have you started to develop tools like that?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so right now we do have a lot of
Speaker 4: AI functionality built into our products and our cameras. I
Speaker 4: think the tool we've focused on first with the body
Speaker 4: camera is actually offloading all the audio transcripts of the
Speaker 4: videos that take place and letting AI analyze those in
Speaker 4: suggest a first draft of the police report to the officer.
Speaker 4: There are some sexier use cases of AI, like the
Speaker 4: facial recognition element you mentioned, but the use case I
Speaker 4: just mentioned literally takes the officer's administrative workload down from
Speaker 4: fifty percent to twenty percent, and thus an officer ends
Speaker 4: up in the street with far more of their time
Speaker 4: days of a week that we're giving back to the officer.
Speaker 4: And so our early AI tools are much more focused
Speaker 4: on productivity such that officers can do what they do
Speaker 4: best at more often. But I think as we build
Speaker 4: out our next generation body cameras with more frankly battery power,
Speaker 4: computational power, better connectivity, you'll see some of those other
Speaker 4: AI products at the edge start to start there to
Speaker 4: make their way into the body cameras. I think first
Speaker 4: it'll probably be license plate recognition. But over the longer term,
Speaker 4: you know, once we can prove that these speci facial
Speaker 4: recognition models are rid of inherent bias, that's when I
Speaker 4: think we end up, you know, launching a product like that.
Speaker 2: You know, Josh, the the ac LU has already brought
Speaker 2: up concerns about the bias inherent in AI, the hallucinations
Speaker 2: that AI is capable of, and I think has issued
Speaker 2: complaints about use of AI and your software to draft
Speaker 2: police reports. How do you respond to that, because of
Speaker 2: course it can make mistakes and if you see a
Speaker 2: first draft, even if you're a trained police officer, that
Speaker 2: can also alter the way you think of what actually happened.
Speaker 2: So is it maybe doing as much harm as it
Speaker 2: does help?
Speaker 4: No, I wouldn't put it that way. And and and look,
Speaker 4: you know, before I get to kind of the process
Speaker 4: and we run, I think it's reasonable to expect, like
Speaker 4: the a c l U is never going to be
Speaker 4: doing art reels about police technology or what you know,
Speaker 4: what police you know, products they use and so forth,
Speaker 4: And so I do think we have to remember a
Speaker 4: little of that And and you know. Our approach to
Speaker 4: this is is something called our ee a C, which
Speaker 4: is our Ethic Equity and Ethics Advisory Coalition, and this
Speaker 4: is a group internal to ax On of folks that
Speaker 4: come from the world of activism and don't see the
Speaker 4: issues the same way that the police do and see
Speaker 4: issues more like the a C l U does and
Speaker 4: and they're part of our product development process. So we
Speaker 4: have gates along our product development where we check back
Speaker 4: in and do a full product deep dive with our
Speaker 4: ee a C and they ask those questions and they
Speaker 4: want to see it demonstrated that these models are rid
Speaker 4: of bias and so forth. And that's been a very
Speaker 4: very productive relationship for us with our EAC, and it
Speaker 4: really does validate internally, you know, our product designs and
Speaker 4: motivations to make sure that hey, when these things hit
Speaker 4: the market, you know, the folks who are the most
Speaker 4: critical voices in the room will have the data to
Speaker 4: share with them about the process we took, you know,
Speaker 4: to arrive at these products. And you can read a
Speaker 4: little more about this on Axon dot com. It's called
Speaker 4: our Innovative Responsible Innovation Framework and it's on there and
Speaker 4: you can see exactly how we think about some of
Speaker 4: those issues.
Speaker 5: So, Josh, your company started for primarily law enforcement. I'm
Speaker 5: wondering if you're seeing more demand pick up from civilians,
Speaker 5: maybe civilians worried about crime, particularly post pandemic. Have you
Speaker 5: been seeing more civilians and what products clar are they
Speaker 5: looking for.
Speaker 4: We we do sell a consumer taser device and uh
Speaker 4: and and it has picked up since the pandemic. For sure,
Speaker 4: It's still a relatively small part of our business. But
Speaker 4: over the next couple of years, you know, I think
Speaker 4: we'll be updating our product portfolio in the consumer space,
Speaker 4: and we're really excited about the future iterations of the product.
Speaker 4: You know, Ultimately, our core market is police and we
Speaker 4: wouldn't want it any other way. Where we're honored to
Speaker 4: work with police, and we think our products just have
Speaker 4: such great product market bid in that market, but in
Speaker 4: consumers where folks don't want to carry a gun and
Speaker 4: they're looking for you know, other alternatives that are that
Speaker 4: can protect them but not in a lethal fashion. You know,
Speaker 4: I think the taser is a viable alternative. So so
Speaker 4: we're excited to talk more about that in the coming
Speaker 4: years as we as we launched some new products in
Speaker 4: that space.
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