Justice Department Wants More Help From AI
Just recently, the Justice Department announced that they are looking to spend at least $2 million on further researching the crime-fighting capabilities of AI.
It's believed that this technology could eventually help them to fight against human trafficking, child pornography, drug trafficking, and other crimes.
At the moment, when trying to address these issues, investigators have been required to sift through a hefty amount of data on the matter. And the hope is that they will be able to use AI to comb through the details and sort through that data at a much faster pace.
According to the National Institute for Justice, the technology would help to sift through various communications of suspects in order to essentially provide further investigative leads for law enforcement.
Their announcement states that they will be looking to develop technologies that might be able to:
“distinguish a contraband file through it's encrypted container-without breaking encryption-with a sufficient degree of certainty to support a probable cause for a court order to unlock the device, based on the encryption pattern of a particular [type of file].”
It's not only law enforcement in the U.S. that are looking to use AI either. Officers in London are also allegedly looking to use AI to help them to sort through data in just the same way. And they'll be moving the data to cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services and others.
China has also been working on a new police station in Wuhan, that won't have any human officers, but instead it will be powered by AI.
However, despite the enthusiasm to move in this direction, the technology still has some kinks to work out as it still has had difficulty distinguishing between things such as skin and sand color. It's expected that over the next couple of years however, that there will be a great deal of improvement.
There are privacy concerns over the sensitivity of the data and the opportunity for it to be misused. And there is also the opportunity for bias, as researchers from Stanford and MIT have previously pointed out with their findings on a variety of commercial facial-analysis programs. They suggested that these commercial programs might be expressing a bias with regard to gender and skin-type.
Some folks are a lot more concerned than others, those such as Elon Musk and Julian Assange have expressed their own fears about moving in this direction.
Assange previously stated that merging AI systems with national security was a threat to mankind. And Musk, who admits that he has had exposure to some of the most cutting edge AI, has brought up his own concerns for AI safety on multiple occasions and suggested that strict regulation is needed to try and offset any danger.
AI has been increasingly used in the criminal justice system in a growing number of states throughout the US. For example, some judges have been using automated risk-assessment systems to determine custody and pre-trial release decisions. Legal experts have warned however, that this could pose some great risks to due process, civil liberties, and more.
AI software that was recently developed by an Israeli startup known as LawGeex demonstrated results which suggested that the software was much more efficient at analyzing legal documents than very experienced lawyers. It was able to sort through the NDAs (nondisclosure agreements) with more speed and accuracy than at least 20 experienced lawyers.
It's evident that this technology is going to greatly transform the legal profession and the criminal justice system as we know it over time.
Can we expect that law enforcement agencies will find a suitable balance between reaping the benefits of this technology, while still being mindful of privacy concerns and personal security? We'll have to find out as the trend unfolds.
Pics:
Henrik5000/istock
istock via theweek.com/articles/689359/how-humans-lose-control-artificial-intelligence
Futurama via reillytop10.com
Sources:
https://gizmodo.com/justice-department-drops-2-million-to-research-crime-f-1823367404
https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/ai-bias-when-algorithms-go-bad/
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608986/forget-killer-robotsbias-is-the-real-ai-danger/
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/edward-snowden-we-must-seize-the-means-of-communication-to-protect-basic-freedoms-8c01b75eb384
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/18/9-mind-blowing-things-elon-musk-said-about-robots-and-ai-in-2017.html
https://futurism.com/chinas-ai-police-station-humans/
http://ohrh.law.ox.ac.uk/why-artificial-intelligence-is-already-a-human-rights-issue/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/haroldstark/2017/07/19/artificial-intelligence-and-the-overwhelming-question-of-human-rights/#6d8f5e1c6c90
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2017/09/19/how-robots-iot-and-artificial-intelligence-are-transforming-the-police/2/#27274b5e2bde
https://www.theverge.com/2018/1/23/16907238/artificial-intelligence-surveillance-cameras-security
http://www.standard.net/Business/2018/01/31/AI-in-the-court-When-algorithms-rule-on-jail-time
https://www.aclu.org/blog/privacy-technology/pitfalls-artificial-intelligence-decisionmaking-highlighted-idaho-aclu-case
https://www.timesofisrael.com/israeli-ai-software-whips-expert-lawyers-in-contract-analysis/
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/17/lawyers-could-be-replaced-by-artificial-intelligence.html
Who are you going to complain to when the machines make a mistake? Are people going to even believe you when they trust them so blindly and just out of plain old laziness don't want to overturn any of their decisions?
Probably it's gonna be tough in the first years when this kind of society model hit us (like with all our new experiments), but if this is the kind of future for a long-term we are waiting for, things should settle down very soon after that...
Thank you for this quality post. I am a translator, and I find that if you get to know Google Translate well, you start knowing in advance what mistakes it makes, so you can speed up your translation time considerably.
I believe that technology and robots are the future and we are seeing glimpses of it everyday . What humans can do , technology is advanced in that perspective . You know how they tell you to watch what you put on the Internet , because once it’s up, it will be there forever . Further meaning that technology can help stop crimes like human trafficking , child pornography and so forth .
Maybe this is what we need , a legal system under technology as well
Great Comment @journeyoflife. The key I believe will be how to interpret robots to humans and vice versa. Lots of jobs in that area! You've got a new follower.
Great news about the use of such great technology, thank you for sharing
Nicely written my friend @doitvoluntarily. helpful infos. thanks.
would be a great achievement against injustice and crime, that put into practice that new technology .. good post very interesting.
I invite you to read my last post and be able to count on your vote. Thank you.
useful information👍
I think Justice Department makes an Intelligent decision.
It is going seemlessly straight........ technology is helpful as hell......
It might be able to fight off the social evils...thats good and we must appreciate it........
But firstly we must be good people so that their is no need to devolop such technology......
Very interesting information about technology that is so great and very useful. Hopefully continue to be refined for the future. Thanks for sharing @doitvoluntarily.