There's so much excitement around AI at the moment that in some quarters it's even being heralded as the'fourth industrial revolution'. With AI-powered Go and chess champions, it seems like the singularity is fast approaching. To be clear, AI isn't quite advanced as we've seen in science fiction. Full Hollywood-style robot AI that can relate to any human experience is some way off, but there is plenty of it in development, advancing all the time, and in places you might not automatically expect. Fifteen years after the movie Minority Report explored themes of futuristic crime-fighting, free will, determinism and RSI-free desktops, the UK's Durham police force has stepped up with its vision of the future of law enforcement.

DURHAM POLICE will look to artificial intelligence (AI) to help it make decide whether to remand or release criminal suspects. The AI system, which has been tested by the Durham Police Force since 2013 and trained on five year's worth of data, assigns a risk category to suspects. The BBC reports that the system has proved itself to be 98 per cent accurate in assessing suspects as low risk suspects, and 88 per cent accurate in flagging high-risk ones, although it is not made clear exactly how this is measured. The AI system, known as Harm Assessment Risk Tool (HART), has been tested by custody officers in the course of their work, but has not yet assisted their decisions. However, this is about to change, said Sheena Urwin, head of criminal justice at Durham Constabulary.

Police in Durham are set to begin using a new artificial intelligence tool to help officers decide whether a suspect should be kept in custody. The Harm Assessment Risk Tool (Hart) has been trained with data from five years of offending histories, and uses the information to classify suspects as low, medium or high risk of offending if released. It was first tested in 2013, and its classification of suspects as low risk was accurate 98% of the time. Those classed as high risk was correct 88% of the time. Durham Constabulary's head of criminal justice, Sheena Urwin, told the BBC: "I imagine in the next two to three months we'll probably make it a live tool to support officers' decision making."