Can AI help police fight crime?
Law enforcement is responsible for maintaining public safety, and they must deal with all the challenges that come with it. Fortunately, police can rely on technology to handle many of their jobs. In recent years, artificial intelligence technology in particular has become an important part of police work around the world.
As AI-based policing technology becomes increasingly important to law enforcement, areas such as crime prevention and prediction are also undergoing dramatic changes. Predictive policing is just one result of this transformation, with other policing practices also undergoing significant adjustments to better ensure public safety.
The use of AI in current police work
Law enforcement is starting to unlock the potential of AI in several important ways:
1. Face recognition
Facial recognition technology is critical to police departments. With facial recognition technology, police use image data to identify fugitives and missing persons. If you've ever seen video from a camera on the street, you know how poor quality these images are. You can imagine how difficult and labor-intensive it is to review such images to find key information. Many police departments don't even have enough manpower or experts to handle such a large-scale image analysis effort, and they won't be able to solve all cases.
In face comparison, AI is more accurate than people, which saves police time. Computers can use parameters to identify faces that humans cannot recognize. Now, some of the more advanced AI technologies can even find faces in crowds at stadiums, and the technology recently helped Chinese police catch a criminal at a crowded sporting event.
2. Camera
In most large cities, cameras can be found on the streets and inside businesses large and small. Law enforcement often relies on this footage to view crimes after they are committed and catch criminals. AI can perform not only facial recognition on these images, but also objects and complex activities, such as car accidents.
Object recognition is especially important for police if they need to monitor large events, such as music festivals or marathons. Because they cannot appear in multiple places at the same time, the police can only use AI to issue an alert when someone in the area is armed or behaves abnormally and may pose a threat.
Object recognition has other uses as well. By analyzing footage from the street, AI is able to identify vehicles based on feature sets. For example, a computer can display blue minivans passing through a specific intersection within an hour. This feature is useful if police are searching for a stolen vehicle or a fugitive and need quick results.
In addition, law enforcement agencies are also using aerial drones to explore wider ground areas and participate in search and rescue efforts more quickly. Of course, these drones will also be equipped with AI face and object recognition capabilities.
3. Predictive security management
AI predictive policing refers to the ability of police to predict where a crime is about to occur, who commits the crime, the type of crime and the victims. Predictive policing is a hotly debated topic, but it's still a long way from becoming commonplace. Businesses and police departments are only beginning to test predictive policing systems. Such systems will eventually make great strides in predicting and preventing crime.
In terms of predicting crime locations, the system will use algorithms to analyze crime rates in different areas and generate a crime hotspot map. This will allow police to increase patrols and surveillance in these areas.
In addition, AI can generate a more accurate view of who is likely to commit a crime and who is likely to re-offend after being released from prison, based on collected data and analysis of historical patterns. Of course, the use of this information is controversial, and this debate is bound to intensify as the practice becomes more widely used.
Predictive policing technology may be most useful in identifying possible future victims of crime. Relevant agencies are currently conducting research to prevent elder abuse cases in advance by better understanding the environmental conditions that breed elder abuse cases and using this information to predict which types of abuse are most likely to occur. Preventing elder abuse is just one use case, but you can also imagine what predictive policing could do for other types of violent crime.
4. Robots
We are not likely to replace entire police forces with robots anytime soon. But police departments are already using robots to handle a variety of tasks, from everyday tasks to the most dangerous jobs.
In fact, some countries are already testing robots acting as police officers. Dubai is trialling street robots that transmit data back to headquarters for review. In addition, the street robots will be equipped with touch screens for reporting crimes, and these robots support six different languages.
Robots can also perform more complex tasks on behalf of police officers. They can enter dangerous places and identify people and objects that pose potential threats. Compared with police risking their lives to enter these places, robots are undoubtedly a safer alternative. There are also robots that can mark bombs, improving public safety without putting police officers at risk.
5. Non-Violent Crime
AI is good at spotting anomalies in patterns, which also makes it good at spotting non-violent crimes like fraud and money laundering. Banks have joined this AI revolution as AI becomes integral to their security. Law enforcement will work with banks to detect such crimes.
By analyzing images, AI can identify counterfeit products and banknotes with a high degree of accuracy, uncovering details that the human eye might miss.
Read the FutureGrasp article by Tom Campbell Learn about the use of AI in police work.
What is the future of AI in law enforcement?
AI may still be an emerging technology in the field of law enforcement and, therefore, its potential has not yet been fully unleashed. Nonetheless, AI is already having an impact in important areas such as surveillance, crime prevention, and crime fighting.
Using enhanced imaging technology and object and facial recognition technology, AI can reduce the need for labor-intensive tasks in law enforcement, freeing up police officers to perform more complex tasks. In addition, AI may also catch some criminals that cannot be detected by humans and solve crimes that cannot yet be detected by humans.
Predictive policing is also an area of concern as it has a significant impact on how criminals are caught and victims identified. Ideally, predictive policing technology can protect public safety like never before, but as systems become more advanced, there are still some issues that need to be addressed.
No one knows how these changes will alter the role of police and benefit public safety. But what is certain is that the results will have important consequences for all of us.