July 13, 2020

Skydio Engagement and Responsible Use Principles

Skydio Logo

Skydio

Autonomous Drone aerial photo of mountain biking

Our mission is to make the world more productive, creative, and safe with autonomous flight.

We consider the holistic impact our products have on communities and countries. Our focus is on advancing our mission to make the world more productive, creative, and safe. We are shaped by core values of accountability, transparency, and the protection of privacy and civil liberties. Informed by these values, we seek positive impact. This also requires us to proactively understand and mitigate potential misuse.

We use our role as a leader in autonomous flight technology to promote the responsible development and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Our leadership role offers the opportunity — and the obligation — to shape AI in a way that reflects our values.

We proactively promote best practices on the responsible use of our products with our customers. Our sales processes, training materials, services, and support methodologies will emphasize responsible use, while also anticipating and countering misuse.

We engage in policy and regulatory efforts to support laws, policies, and standards aligned with our values. While we are committed to using our products and customer engagements to make a difference, we believe that companies cannot and should not act alone. We partner with governments, civil society organizations, and industry associations to advance laws and policies that promote responsible use.

We engage in a responsible way with public sector customers in the United States and other free societies. In general, we believe serving government customers in free societies advances our mission of contributing to the public good. We all have a stake in the consequential and challenging questions associated with national security and public safety. With respect to those agencies and others, we adopt an approach of responsible engagement. We believe that our country, and the world, will be worse if leading technology companies refuse to participate. We will use our position to promote the responsible use of our products consistent with our mission.

We will not sell our products to repressive regimes. If our products fall into the wrong hands and are being used for harm, we will take appropriate measures to mitigate potential misuse.

We will not put weapons on our drones and will oppose fully autonomous lethal weapons systems. Our development process is focused on providing full automation, but we believe lethal weapons should not be fully automated.

We seek to create connections between our employees and the customers we serve beyond simply providing products and services. Shared understanding of the challenges, successes, and failures (even when painful) is critical to advancing our mission.

We seek to provide flexibility and freedom for people to choose what they work on. As a small company we need to work as a unified team. However, we will seek to accommodate employee preferences to work on the projects that are the most motivating and important for them.

What team would you like to contact today?

Support