Advanced technologies, especially artificial intelligence (AI), are leveraged by many companies in various industries to help fuel business growth, achieve efficiencies and support human workers. Organizations that implement AI solutions tend to benefit from enhanced performance due to the plethora of opportunities and applications, and this shouldn't come as a surprise. AI has seeped into daily life, from digital assistants to the technology that powers our smartphones. It's expected that law enforcement agencies nationwide will continue to adopt AI-powered tools to serve various purposes. How are these organizations using AI currently?

Elected officials and local authorities across the United States and around the world should consider replicating an innovative legislative proposal that would prohibit police from arming robots used in their law enforcement operations. The bill, introduced on March 18 by New York City council members Ben Kallos and Vanessa Gibson, would "prohibit the New York City Police Department (NYPD) from using or threatening to use robots armed with a weapon or to use robots in any manner that is substantially likely to cause death or serious physical injury." The proposed law comes after a social media outcry over the use of an unarmed 70-pound ground robot manufactured by Boston Dynamics in a policing operation last month in the Bronx. US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez criticized its deployment "for testing on low-income communities of color with under-resourced schools" and suggested the city should invest instead in education. In a statement published in Wired and other news outlets, Boston Dynamics CEO Robert Playter said that the company's robots "will achieve long-term commercial viability only if people see robots as helpful, beneficial tools without worrying if they're going to cause harm."

Governments need an abrupt change of direction to avoid "stumbling zombielike into a digital welfare dystopia," Philip G. Alston, a human rights expert reporting on poverty, told the United Nations General Assembly last year, in a report calling for the regulation of digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, to ensure compliance with human rights. The private companies that play an increasingly dominant role in social welfare delivery, he noted, "operate in a virtually human-rights-free zone." Last month, the U.N. expert monitoring contemporary forms of racism flagged concerns that "governments and nonstate actors are developing and deploying emerging digital technologies in ways that are uniquely experimental, dangerous, and discriminatory in the border and immigration enforcement context." The European Border and Coast Guard Agency, also called Frontex, has tested unpiloted military-grade drones in the Mediterranean and Aegean for the surveillance and interdiction of vessels of migrants and refugees trying to reach Europe, the expert, E. Tendayi Achiume, reported. The U.N. antiracism panel, which is charged with monitoring and holding states to account for their compliance with the international convention on eliminating racial discrimination, said states must legislate measures combating racial bias and create independent mechanisms for handling complaints.

We know how artificial intelligence works in our lives: it helps in picking movies, choosing dates, and correcting misspellings. But what does it mean in policing? Is AI replacing traditional police tasks? Does the police use of AI present novel challenges? Should increasing police reliance on AI concern us?

Police have said they are seeking "balance" in the use of artificial intelligence to predict crimes, after freedom of information requests found that 14 UK police forces were deploying, testing or investigating predictive AI techniques. The report by Liberty, "Policing by Machine", warned that the tools risk entrenching existing biases and delivering inaccurate predictions. The civil liberties group urged police to end the use of predictive AI, saying mapping techniques rely on "problematic" historical arrest data, while individual risk assessment programmes "encourage discriminatory profiling". The forces using or trialling predictive mapping programmes are Avon and Somerset Constabulary, Cheshire Constabulary, Dyfed-Powys Police, Greater Manchester Police, Kent Police, Lancashire Police, Merseyside Police, the Metropolitan Police Service, Norfolk Constabulary, Northamptonshire Police, Warwickshire Police and West Mercia Police, West Midlands Police and West Yorkshire Police, while a further three forces – Avon and Somerset, Durham and West Midlands – are using or trialling individual risk-assessment programmes. Norfolk Police, for instance, is trialling a system for identifying whether burglaries should be investigated, while Durham Constabulary's Harm Assessment Risk Tool (Hart) provides advice to custody officers on individuals' risk of re-offending, and West Midlands Police uses hotspot mapping and a data-driven analysis project.

The revelation that the New Orleans Police Department quietly used a Silicon Valley company to predict crime raises dilemmas similar to those emerging from artificial intelligence in other spheres, like consumer behavior, medicine and employment. But what's uniquely shocking about the story of New Orleans's partnership with the national security company Palantir is that it has remained largely unreported before now. As an article in The Verge details, James Carville, the well-known Democratic strategist and Bill Clinton adviser, did actually mention the partnership on a radio program back in 2014. He knew about it for a simple reason: It was his idea (at least according to Carville). By his account, Palantir was looking for "pro bono" opportunities, which is often code for a corporate dry run for untested technology.