The era of pre-crime? Chinese AI can tell you're a criminal by looking at your photo

The greatest danger we face is underestimating the power of todays, let alone tomorrows, technology. As we enter an era of persistent online and offline surveillance it is becoming easier to see how one day police forces around the world could create a Minority Report like "Pre-crime" unit – or, how governments could use technology to "enforce" a status quo You know when you look at someone in the street, and, even though you know nothing about them, something about their look makes you cross the road to avoid them? Or when you look at police mug shots and subconsciously think "Yeah, they look like the criminal type"? Well now a pair of Chinese researchers have dived straight into the controversial area by trying to see if artificial intelligence (AI) can determine who's a criminal and who isn't – using nothing more than a photograph. And then, the more dangerous question – if it can could it go one step further and determine an innocent persons pre-disposition to criminality and how likely they are to, eventually, commit a crime?