Do you remember the 2002 movie Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise? If you don’t, then here it is. Taking place in the 2050s, they arrested you before you even did anything. Because artificial intelligence predicted their crimes. But can this happen in real life? Can AI predict crimes? China thinks so.
So China wants to use artificial intelligence to help them solve crimes. That sounds good, right? But China wants to help the police solve crimes before they happen. They also want to catch the bad guys even before they have the opportunities to become bad guys. The Chinese police are all for it.
China also has an ally in Cloud Walk, a facial recognition tech firm. They make software that gathers data on the whereabouts and doings of people. For example, if the person goes somewhere shady, Cloud walk assumes the person is more likely to be a criminal. They can also use?algorithms and crowd analysis to study what they deem as ‘suspicious patterns and activities’. Furthermore, they want to use personal re-identification software. That matches a person’s real ID, even if they moved to a new town. Or even if they try to change their identity. It’s also a part of what they call body recognition.
This opens the door to so many problems, in IT service, in law enforcement, and especially for society. This is going to cause everything from profiling to police brutality to false arrests. For example, someone who goes into a bar might just want a drink, not to start a fight. When someone goes to a gun shop, that doesn’t mean they’re planning to start a killing spree. Plus, one again, you’re taking jobs out of human hands and putting them in robots. Can AI predict crimes? Or will a lot of innocent people be imprisoned, or worse?