TechScape: Can AI Really Predict Crime? - AI Summary

The programme used historical crime data like arrests, calls for service, field interview cards – which police filled out with identifying information every time they stopped someone regardless of the reason – and more to map out "problem areas" for officers to focus their efforts on or assign criminal risk scores to individuals. Documents the Guardian reviewed and wrote about in November show that Voyager Analytics claimed it could use AI to analyse social media profiles to detect emerging threats based on a person's friends, groups, posts and more. In a case study showing how Voyager's software could be used to detect people who "most fully identify with a stance or any given topic," the company looked at the ways it would have analysed the social media presence of Adam Alsahli, who was killed last year while attempting to attack the Corpus Christi naval base in Texas. From the New York Times: "In 2018, thousands of Google employees signed a letter protesting the company's involvement in Project Maven, a military program that uses artificial intelligence to interpret video images and could be used to refine the targeting of drone strikes. Now, as Google positions cloud computing as a key part of its future, the bid for the new Pentagon contract could test the boundaries of those AI principles, which have set it apart from other tech giants that routinely seek military and intelligence work."