Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around since the 1950s. But it’s only recently that we’ve started to see the potential applications of it in our day-to-day lives. A prime example of this is how law enforcement agencies use AI technology to fight crime and prevent further damage from crime. Law enforcement officers are using state-of-the-art computer vision technology to identify objects in videos or pictures taken from surveillance cameras.
Police departments all around the country are stepping into the future with new crime fighting AI applications. The use of AI, which is now becoming widespread has aided police around the country. AI is used for many applications from identifying individuals and their actions in videos relating to criminal activity or public safety, DNA analysis, gunshot detection, and crime forecasting.
What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?
What is AI? The term artificial intelligence (AI) encompasses a number of different technologies that can be used to perform specific tasks. These tasks include, but are not limited to: automation, personalization, simulation, prediction, decision making, learning and optimization. AI technologies enable computers to mimic human behavior when performing these tasks.
Who uses AI technology?
Law enforcement is using artificial intelligence to identify suspects in pictures, predict crimes, anticipate a suspect’s next move and more. A new report from market-research firm Tractica estimates that governments will spend around $12 billion on AI for public safety by 2021. The military uses AI technology for everything from self-driving tanks to missile defense systems; by 2030, it’s expected to allocate over $13 billion a year toward AI research—more than it currently spends on cybersecurity.
Facial Recognition
AI is frequently used in facial recognition software. The sheer amount of video police would painstakingly go over can be reviewed by AI. Face recognition is now able to more accurately scan mass amounts of photos and videos, with a smaller margin of error. Advancements in AI have provided the capacity for efficiency in criminal justice fieldwork. Current funding for this research is focused on algorithms to improve the detection, recognition, and identification of individuals.
Predictive Policing
Another AI technology is predictive policing programs. The pre-crimes unit from Minority Report is still science fiction, but the visual technology from that movie has actually become reality. These programs allow police to predict things about an area based on historical crime data. The only issue is that crime data tends to be inaccurate. Several cities around the country have already banned the use of predictive police programs. The technology is still in its infancy but working towards more accurate data and algorithms to critically analyze the data, there will still be plenty of room for errors. Only time will tell how far we advance this technology for this use. While it does have some useful applications, without accurate data, this technology is still just sci-fi.
AI in Police Education
AI based software creates an individualized education plan based on an officer’s specific needs. An instructor can ask machine learning what areas a student needs help with, input answers to identify concepts they struggle with, then track which concepts they understand and don’t understand. In essence, AI allows instructors to reach each student based on their specific strengths and weaknesses. It eliminates (or minimizes) gaps in student comprehension across varying levels of difficulty. In other words, it works for all students at once!
Data Mining
Artificial Intelligence can predict data from past behavior. It focuses on learning from historical patterns of information (data) to make future predictions about similar instances. Data mining can spot trends in large volumes of complex data. AI uses sophisticated algorithms to find hidden patterns in historical data to predict future outcomes. This technology has many applications. This includes detecting credit card fraud, deciphering handwriting and predicting movies that are likely to succeed based on their content and genre.
Natural Language Processing
Natural language processing (NLP) allows a computer to understand human speech. It’s sort of like teaching a computer a new language. Instead of programming code, you can simply explain it in plain English. This allows computers to process information more quickly. Natural language processing can help translate with offenders and victims when the luxury of time doesn’t exist.
Cyber Crime Detection
Detecting cyber-crime is one of the main goals of a Law Enforcement Agency (LEA). In recent years, police forces have implemented new technologies for crime detection and investigation. This has led to many technological applications in LEAs. Some are focusing on preventing serious crime, while others aid crime investigation. Artificial intelligence (AI) can enhance cyber-crime detection. It can analyze both chatbots’ discourse with human users online as well as target computer systems.
