AI & Predictive Policing
When ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence (AI) first surfaced, I immediately thought about ways to use this technology for policing and crime prediction. Then I watched as the NBA integrated AI with the Miami Heat using Heat Maps to visualize the team’s offense, and I thought this is precisely what policing needs to help us predict crime. The Miami Heat used these maps to chart past and current shots of players as a high-tech shot chart. (Friend, 2023) Miami Heat Shot Chart
I always disliked the untimely “hotspots” as they were always very reactionary and mostly 10 days old. I always dreamed of CAD data mixed with officers founding or unfounding reports in real-time as they type reports to determine where visibility was needed for crime suppression teams, gang investigators, traffic, and regular patrol officers. With the AI capability, this subtracts the need for programmers and allows single users to theoretically dump data into the silo continually and watch the information evolve and morph into live data heat maps so that police are constantly visible and present in the areas of the most pertinence. This is important as criminals stick to a routine and often hit the same areas. Time will tell if this can lead to arrests, captures, and crime reduction.
During a 60 minutes segment filmed in April 2023, Google CEO Sundar Pichai advised that every product will be impacted by AI (60 minutes, 2023). As Intelligence-led policing models have been popular over the years, introducing the 2023 AI techniques and the updated heatmaps for disrupting criminal networks and breaking the stereotypes that human entry errors were once creating may be a solution the policing world has been waiting for. Breaking down the data even further into categories such as crime suppression, traffic crashes, patrol, gang, violent crimes, sex offenses, and so on for specific events and occasions could also lead to a host of vulnerable areas of operations to identify and exploit.
This is just the tipping point of the crime prediction analysis opportunities of the future. What AI can bring to policing will be an enormous amount of algorithmic data that if used correctly and with justice, merit, value, and common sense will be able to predict so much more crime than ever before as mentioned before as criminals stick to a routine and if studied correctly can be identified by patterns and their illustrious methods of operations. Like a shot chart, the heat map has the ability to give up the suspect’s pattern of play, whether they are making the “shots” or whether they are not. For investigators, the suspect’s playbook will be some of the best inside information.
As warned, AI provides disinformation called “hallucinations” which the industry is still working to combat (60 Minutes, 2023). This is complete wrong information that seems true. As the AI language is still in its infancy, investigators must not just use AI alone for crime predicate and causation. This is just one tool in the toolbox for building a case. Just as AI can create a hallucination that we are yet to understand, it also can create “emergent properties” in which it has taught itself a skill that it was not completely trained such as learning a complete language after only a few words (60 Minutes, 2023).
Many things are still to be uncovered with AI that have yet to be revealed. Fake videos and pictures will be created using this technology that will seem so authentic, but yet will not be real. People are using this tool already to resurrect the dead to talk to deceased children in real time using virtual reality tools (Penle, 2023). Deepfakes appear real and crimes will be used at an unsurfaced level. From acts of terrorism to a social media post depicting disinformation, the world before AI will be looked at either as a monster that we wish had never been unleashed or an opportunity that we wonder where it had been all along. We soon shall see.
Sources:
60 Minutes. (2023, April 17). The AI revolution: Google’s developers on the future of artificial intelligence | 60 Minutes [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=880TBXMuzmk
Friend, T. (2023, January 24). Miami Heat and AT&T partner for AI art installation for fans. www.sportsbusinessjournal.com. Retrieved April 18, 2023, from https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Journal/Issues/2023/01/23/Technology/miami-heat-ai-art.aspx
Penley, T. (2023, April 16). AI app’s ability to resurrect lost loved ones sparks fears technology is crossing the fantasy-reality Rubicon. Fox News. https://www.foxnews.com/media/ai-app-resurrect-lost-loved-ones-fears-technology-crossing-fantasy-reality-rubicon