EU to Use AI Policing System That ‘Could Possibly Target Innocent People’

The tantalizing prospect of predicting crime before it happens has got law enforcement agencies excited about AI. Most efforts so far have focused on forecasting where and when crime will happen, but now British police want to predict who will perpetrate it.

The idea is reminiscent of sci-fi classic Minority Report, where clairvoyant “precogs” were used to predict crime before it happened and lock up the would-be criminals. The National Data Analytics Solution (NDAS) under development in the UK will instead rely on AI oracles to scour police records and statistics to find those at risk of violent crime.

Machine learning will be used to analyze a variety of local and national police databases containing information like crime logs, stop and search records, custody records, and missing person reports. In particular, it’s aimed at identifying those at risk of committing or becoming a victim of gun or knife crime, and those who could fall victim to modern slavery.

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