"Please make yourself heard! This concerns you too!” Gabriele Jacobs is dead serious. As programme leader of a major study into how artificial intelligence can be used to improve public safety, she wants everyone involved. “It is enormously enriching when the important research questions and the approach to be taken are determined together.”
Demonstrations that get out of hand, rioting by football hooligans and serious crime, but also managing the streams of visitors to large events and assessing the security requirements in vulnerable districts: these are all areas in which artificial intelligence can provide municipalities, the police and the public prosecution service with new methods and instruments for maintaining public order and creating a safe (or safer) living environment. However, whether we’re talking about automatic facial recognition, crowd safety management or identifying patterns to predict criminal behaviour, the risk of Big Brother situations is never far away. And ethical, legal and other societal questions immediately raise their head.
