Minority Report-style crime prevention with artificial intelligence is fast becoming reality

  • Improvements in detection technology have all but solved credit card fraud and spam email
  • Security agencies are deploying AI to detect abnormal behaviour that may suggest malicious intent

In the Tom Cruise science fiction action film Minority Report, based on a short story by American writer Philip K Dick, future society depends on three mutants, called “precogs”, to foresee crime before it occurs. Artificial intelligence technology, combined with facial recognition systems and big data analytics, now makes such a pre-crime capability available to law enforcement agencies. Photo: Handout

In the 1956 short story The Minority Report by American writer Philip K Dick, three “precogs” foresee all crime, allowing members of a special “pre-crime” squad to pick up suspects before the crime is committed.

Sixty-three years and a Steven Spielberg film later, the line between science fiction and reality is blurring fast, according to Nimrod Kozlovski, whose many hats include law professor, law partner, venture capitalist and cybersecurity consultant.

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