Artificial Intelligence Police Roaming the Streets of Britain.. Criticism!

The British police are working to employ artificial intelligence technologies to combat crime on the streets of Britain proactively.

According to what was published by the British "Daily Mail", the British police use artificial intelligence technologies, including facial recognition cameras that monitor faces while shopping, along with algorithms that predict crimes before they happen, and there are even more tools, which simulate fictional stories, on the way to actual use in the future.

Detecting the faces of criminals

Currently, a series of cameras are used to record the faces of anyone passing through a specific area. Live facial recognition technologies, as the name suggests, help police officers identify wanted individuals among a large crowd in real time, as an algorithm compares the faces of those walking in front of the camera to a "watch list" of wanted criminals and an alert is issued if artificial intelligence detects a match.

Since 2015, many police forces across the United Kingdom have begun using this technology in public places as part of targeted suppression campaigns and to maintain security in areas witnessing crowded events.

Extensive surveillance

The Home Office said the extensive surveillance was justified by its results, with one wanted criminal caught on camera at King Charles’s coronation being caught and sent straight to prison.

A spokesman for the National Police Chiefs’ Council said: “AI provides opportunities for police officers to test new and creative ideas, helping to find innovative solutions to help boost productivity and make police more effective in tackling crime.”

A wave of criticism

In contrast, civil rights groups have raised concerns about the use of live facial recognition, arguing that the technology is too intrusive in terms of privacy and data protection. There are also concerns about errors in facial recognition technology, which could increase the likelihood of false positives or unnecessary arrests.

Indeed, a report by the National Physical Laboratory, published in March last year, found that the Metropolitan Police’s technology suffers from a “statistically significant demographic imbalance, with more black people having false positives than Asian or white people.”