Page 55 - BBC Focus - August 2017

AI DETECTIVES

There has been a spate of
armed robberies in the city. And
detective VALCRI has been
tasked with scanning thousands
of records of previous crimes to
find patterns and connections
that could help track down who
is responsible. The thing is,
VALCRI isn’t human.
VALCRI, or Visual Analytics for
Sense-making in Criminal
Intelligence Analysis, is an AI
system that can scan police
crime reports, interviews,
videos and pictures, interpreting
words and recognising faces. Its
aim is to identify links between
crimes that might provide
detectives with an
all-important breakthrough.
These links may be similarities
in the modus operandi of the
thief, a reoccurring weapon, or
similar descriptions by
witnesses. Funded by the EU
and led by Prof William Wong at
Middlesex University London,
VALCRI can learn, too. When a
crime analyst decides whether a
piece of evidence identified by
the system is relevant or not, it
will use that information to
improve future searches. It is
currently being tested by police
in the West Midlands and in
Antwerp, Belgium.
VALCRI isn’t alone – other AI
systems for crime detection
have been developed to do
everything from sifting large
volumes of documents for clues
in fraud cases to helping
forensic teams determine how
many people have contributed
to a large, multi-person DNA
sample – something that’s
tricky to fathom at present.

Andy Ridgway is a Bristol-based
freelance science writer. He tweets
from @AndyRidgway1
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