Signal 2: Artificial Intelligence for Crime Prediction
Artificial Intelligence has transformed fields like retail and entertainment by allowing companies like Netflix to accurately predict customer behavior. Can the same ideas be used by law enforcement agencies to predict crime before it happens? This seems to be the case as governments increasing turn to adopt data analysis and AI into the criminal justice system.
With population explosion not only has crime become more complex, government spending has also increased. Governments need to look into AI to analyze the terabytes of data being generated. It is the key to identify patterns in crime where traditional technology fails.
A project backed by the Indian Government studies micro expressions learned from surveillance data to predict violent crime. The project uses an innovative approach to model algorithms after electrical signals generated by neurons called cliques. Rat brains were studied to understand clique’s response to stimuli.
But the stakes are much higher when it comes to public safety than in fields like retail. The above approach is better than using neural networks especially for tracing wrong decisions. However there is a lot of work that needs to be done to ensure that the algorithms are fair and serve their purpose.
