Are the English police following in the footsteps of Philip K. Dick and Steven Spielberg? According to the New Scientist media, the British authorities are working on an artificial intelligence project capable of predicting serious crimes, starting with murders. An initiative that obviously brings to mind the short story Minority Report by the American writer Philip K. Dick, which inspired the film Minority Report released in 2002.
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The National Data Analytics Solution
This intelligence, which is currently at the pilot stage, could be able to identify the culprits, but also the victims. Called the National Data Analytics Solution (NDAS), AI uses data stored by the police, with which it is possible to identify 5 million individuals.
Based on 1,400 parameters, the system then assigns a 'risk score' of committing a crime by those deemed potentially dangerous. The pilot is currently being tested at the West Midlands Police Department. The trials will last until next March. Subsequently, it should be rolled out to the rest of England, starting with the cities of London and Manchester.
Early arrests made possible by the system?
The ethical question that arises, and which was discussed extensively in Minority Report, is: will the police be able to arrest suspects before they commit a crime? The answer is no (for now), and the main objective of the project is apparently to redirect people deemed dangerous to the appropriate social services, so that they can be helped.
However, there remains the fact that the police will undoubtedly use millions of personal data in an incredibly intrusive manner. At which point do people stop being human and only remains data points to be moved around. In addition, the actual reliability of such a system is still to be proven...
The Future Can Be Seen. Murder Can be Prevented. The Guilty Punished Before the Crime is Committed. The System is Perfect. It's Never Wrong. Until It Comes After You.
