India is beefing up police force with AI tools to nab criminals

One of the earliest instances of the use of AI for crime mapping and predictive analytics took place in New Delhi

Science fiction has always had an uncanny knack of predicting future societies. In Philip K Dick’s 1956 short story Minority Report, we encounter a police department of the future preventing crimes before they actually happen with the help of computers and three mutants. 

While we haven’t got hold of mutants as yet, fighting crime with the help of super intelligent computers is almost a reality now. Today, India’s top police forces are deploying artificial intelligence (AI) to detect and prevent crime which brings things somewhat close to Dick’s vision of the future.

In 2009, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government