Professor Says He Foresees No Issues With His AI That Predicts Crimes Before They Happen

Artificial intelligence has been implemented in a number of American cities. Ishanu Chattopadhyay, the University of Chicago professor who created it, said it wouldn't be used by city police forces.

According to a study published in the journal Human Behavior, an artificial intelligence system can predict where and when a crime will occur with 80% to 90 percent accuracy. The question isn't whether the predictions hold up in the real world, but whether the system can be successfully incorporated into a police force.

People are worried that this will be used to put people in jail before committing crimes. It doesn't have the ability to do that.

Bad Record

Similar software has already been implicated in wrongful imprisonment and even the wrongful death of an innocent child, as a result of the inclusion of Artificial Intelligence into policing. Artificial intelligence is notoriously difficult to explain, even by those who build it, as it is rife with biases and is often unreliable.

Some of these concerns, particularly the issue of racism, were acknowledged by Chattopadhyay, who said that he hopes his artificial intelligence will be used to curb crime through social and political measures. He thinks that other artificial intelligence systems are too simplistic and rely too much on information. His system only uses event log data, which he says helps to reduce bias.

He said that it just predicts an event. It doesn't tell you who is going to commit the event. It is not possible to use it in the same way as in the film.

It's definitely true. We're never ones to shy away from optimism, but given the record of systemic abuses of similar experimental cop-assisting softwares, not to mention the systemic abuses against vulnerable populations that already exist within American policing, minus any artificial intelligence, this optimism seems far-fetched.

It is possible to predict future crimes with a high accuracy. There is a reason why the tech won't be abused.

Cursed startup using artificial intelligence to remove call center workers' accents is not something we need.