Bloomington police say they need to get ahead of AI, not fall behind.
BLOOMINGTON, Minn. — Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing our world.
Recently, the Mall Of America introduced artificial intelligence technology to prevent people who shouldn’t be in the mall from entering.
Bloomington police say they need to get ahead of AI, not fall behind.
“We recently put out an announcement, we’re going to have two officers with artificial intelligence,” Police Chief Booker Hodges said. “So I think we might be the first police department in the fleet to do that.”
Chief Hodges isn’t talking about a Robocop. He’s looking to hire two real human employees who could study how AI can be used to help the department.
“Law enforcement is generally behind the curve, as is most technology,” Hodges said. “So my goal is to get ahead of the curve.”
He says he wants to be very careful with this technology, any proof would require human verification.
“Their primary responsibility will be to look at how we might use this technology, one, with body camera video, how can we use it to redact it?” Hodges said. “And two, to look at how criminals might use it.”
He says AI could also be used to make radio traffic more publicly accessible, which could automatically detect and censor private information.
They could also use it to recognize false reports.
“With swatting calls, it would be nice to have AI to be able to determine if it’s a real person or an AI,” the chief said.
But he adds that part of the challenge will be the moral dilemmas that will arise.
“I’m very cautious when I hear people want to use it for predictive models, like predicting whether a certain person is going to commit a crime,” Hodges said. “I just think we’re going down a path we don’t want to go down.”
Candidates for this position will come from the department itself and will receive special training.
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