The Police in UK Want AI To Stop Violent Crime Before it Happens (newscientist.com)

Police in the UK want to predict serious violent crime using artificial intelligence, New Scientist is reporting. The idea is that individuals flagged by the system will be offered interventions, such as counseling, to avert potential criminal behavior. From the report: However, one of the world's leading data science institutes has expressed serious concerns about the project after seeing a redacted version of the proposals. The system, called the National Data Analytics Solution (NDAS), uses a combination of AI and statistics to try to assess the risk of someone committing or becoming a victim of gun or knife crime, as well as the likelihood of someone falling victim to modern slavery. West Midlands Police is leading the project and has until the end of March 2019 to produce a prototype. Eight other police forces, including London's Metropolitan Police and Greater Manchester Police, are also involved. NDAS is being designed so that every police force in the UK could eventually use it. Police funding has been cut significantly over recent years, so forces need a system that can look at all individuals already known to officers, with the aim of prioritizing those who need interventions most urgently, says Iain Donnelly, the police lead on the project.

Comments

Re:Minority Report?

[nwaack]

No, no, no. The pre-cogs could actually see the future (mostly). This is even worse because it's just a bunch of algorithms figuring out pre-crime. Let's just hope the "intervention" stops at counselling.

F'd up AI

[nwaack]

So, to teach the AI they'll basically have to feed it the minute details of every violent crime in the country. That's gonna be one really messed up AI system.

Thoughtcrime!

[OneHundredAndTen]

The UK staying the course toward fascism and 1984.

Re:Minority Report?

[smooth wombat]

until a crime is committed, a person hasn't done anything wrong and should not be harrassed

And yet, if I were to fly, I would be both harassed and treated as a criminal by the TSA even though I haven't done anything.

Unfortunately, the TSA doesn't like this argument and would of course detain me because I objected to being treated like a criminal even though I hadn't yet done anything.