Techno-pessimists have argued that Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies will eventually displace many jobs. Martin Ford, author of “Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future”, opined that jobs that entail computer manipulation of data in routine and predictable ways are vulnerable to automation. For example, the predictive policing system (PredPol) deployed by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) reportedly outperformed experienced LAPD analysts in forecasting crime.

Such zero-sum fears are not entirely unfounded as advances in Machine Learning suggest that AI can emulate and might even surpass human abilities. To manage the expected loss of jobs, a guiding framework for AI adoption was proposed at the World Economic Forum (WEF) Annual Meeting in January 2017, recommending approaches to determine and ensure that AI augments rather than replaces human workers. In the same vein, the plausible impact of AI on law enforcement jobs should be anticipated.

… Muhammad Faizal bin Abdul Rahman is a Research Fellow with the Homeland Defence Programme at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), a unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.