The government of President Javier Milei in Argentina last week announced the creation of an artificial intelligence group within the country's Cybercrime and Cyber Affairs Directorate that will use statistical software to predict crime.
"The mission of the Artificial Intelligence Unit Applied To Security (UIAAS) is the prevention, detection, investigation and prosecution of crime and its connections through the use of artificial intelligence," the Ministry of Security resolution states – as translated by AI.
The UIASS is expected to monitor the public internet and dark web to investigate crimes and identify perpetrators, to conduct image analysis, to analyze security camera video in real time, and to "use machine learning algorithms to analyze historical crime data to predict future crimes and help prevent them," among other responsibilities.
As noted by El País, Argentina's government, in the midst of cutting public agencies, is creating a new public agency to predict crimes, a notion made famous in Minority Report, sci-fi author's Philip K. Dick's cautionary tale about persecuting people for things they haven't done.