A significant use of AI not mentioned in this puff piece is the way that the Chinese are implementing surveillance technology in policing. While Pelley did ask about how Xi Jinping, the authoritarian leader of the Chinese government, might intend to use such technology for nefarious purposes, like targeting dissidents, Lee demured by saying that he couldn't read Xi's mind. Meanwhile, police near Beijing have been equipped with "smart" glasses. They use the same technology as Google glasses, which proved to be a commercial failure as a personal consumer good and are now being used by law enforcement. The Chinese are using these wearable pieces of technology to pick up facial features and car registration plates, which they then cross-check with a database of suspects in real time.

Originally published by Scientific American. Law enforcement's use of predictive analytics recently came under fire again. Dartmouth researchers made waves reporting that simple predictive models--as well as nonexpert humans--predict crime just as well as the leading proprietary analytics software. That the leading software achieves (only) human-level performance might not actually be a deadly blow, but a flurry of press from dozens of news outlets has quickly followed. In any case, even as this disclosure raises questions about one software tool's credibility, a more enduring, inherent quandary continues to plague predictive policing.

Imagine: It's 2012 and Matthew Wegner is sitting at his desk in the back of a one-bedroom apartment in Tempe, Arizona, pounding away at a keyboard. It's night but thick black drapes are pulled over the window; the room is suffused with dim yellow light, casting sickly shadows over the papers tacked to the walls. Most of them are emblazoned with the name Aztez, depicting bloody battles among ancient Aztec warriors. Wegner's fingers fall still as he closes a line of code and reviews his work. A ball of blinding white light suddenly explodes in the middle of the room, shooting sparks to the ceiling and singeing the carpet -- Wegner jumps up and stares, wide-eyed, at the intrusion.