International Journal on Criminology Volume 4, Number 2, Winter 2016 | Page 71

International Journal on Criminology
to neighboring towns to rob and steal. Over Germany as a whole, there was zero
effect.
The miracle software can at best help the police organize their work better
and respond more often in the right place at the right time—although, of course, there
is nothing “predictive” about this. What is more, the positive effect can only ever be
temporary, because the way we react as human beings has not changed since we still
lived in caves: if we think we are being watched, we alter our behavior. And it makes
no difference whether we are being observed with the naked eye or electronically. So
you have paid tens of thousands of euros for game-changing software that, 6 months
later, does not tell you anything worth knowing. There is a name for that: it is called a
scam.
These observations are backed up by the latest research from the US. IARPA—
the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity—quietly began looking at an
IT tool in March 2015 designed to “model and predict rare events.” IARPA, do not
forget, is the high-tech laboratory run by the US intelligence service, and if IARPA’s
on the lookout for a forecasting tool, it can only mean one thing: it does not already
have one. But if Kevin’s report that “Crime-Predicting Artificial Intelligence is in the
Pipeline” were really true, then IARPA would have already gone 95% of the way,
since sporadic serious crimes are exactly the “rare events” that US intelligence would
like to be able to predict.
There is only one possible conclusion: current predictive policing software,
which some people in the media are gullible enough to big up, is considered garbage
by the elite scientists and researchers who work for the US intelligence community,
QED.
2. Can Super Technology Replace Human Intelligence More Globally?
There are people out there, it is true, who worship machine intelligence, who
eulogize the capacity of computers to solve any problem at far greater speed than our
tiny human brains can. But the real problem when dealing with these zealots is not
with technological progress per se and whether it is a wonderful or worrying thing.
The technology is already out there, and that is the way it is. None of us, after all,
wants to go back to the Stone Age, still less this author—delighted as he is by the
world of computers, these desktops or laptops that are like an extension of the human
brain, and which make my working conditions so much easier!
Nor does the problem lie with Silicon Valley and its mystical glorification
of its cyber creations, or the idea that Google almighty will one day rule the world,
finally taming the bête humaine and keeping us from reigning supreme as has been
our custom. Technology is like a religion for Californians, and we should just leave
them to get on and play with their cyber cults in their Singularity University.
No, the nub of the problem is the way our press barons (whose deep pockets
bought our newspapers) treat the whole business. Once-serious journalists are now
the lackeys of the new economy billionaires. They devote their time to PR, extending
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