What Do Socially Intelligent Robots Mean For The Future Of Crime?

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Monday morning started with an early sprint from Baker St to Marylebone train station in London, passing close to 221b Baker St, the fabled home of Sherlock Holmes. However, Holmes was not on my mind, but rather his nemesis, Professor James Moriarty. I was on my way to a seminar on the future of crime (especially as it concerned robots and social robots) organized by the excellent team at UCL's Dawes Centre for Future Crime .

The rumour is that Conan Doyle based the character of Moriarty on George Boole, Professor of Maths at University College Cork from 1849 until 1864 (disappointingly his former home on Grenville Place is in a state of dereliction). Boole, one of the great mathematicians, created Boolean algebra which laid the foundations for computer language and is this the structure around which scientists use machines to mimic and 'improve' on human behaviour. To that end, Moriarty and the idea of the 'future of crime' should be of all the more interest to us in an AI driven world.

In this context, the issue at stake at the Dawe's Centre seminar was whether socially intelligent robots can create new forms of crime, that are not yet covered by legal frameworks and for which countermeasures have not been conceived.

However, in cases where the robot acts intelligently and autonomously, the law is not clear and frameworks on AI offer only meagre guidance. Robert Harris' book 'The Fear Index' is a good illustration of what might occur when an intelligence 'bot' takes over a critical infrastructure, and the use of AI on the battlefield is chilling in its ruthlessness.

Heavy duty robots also permit the exploration, surveillance and protection of faraway places (the deep sea, space and remote parts of the earth) though at the same time they permit mischief by various actors such as attacks on critical marine infrastructure.

It may well be that, as in the case of driverless cars, socially intelligent robots are less dangerous than humans, though the notion itself of criminal robots is cause for concern. For the time being, many of the impetuses to the 'future of crime' are human factors. Some of them relate to changes in wealth – such as the rise of powerful oligarchs, and a rich ultra-high net worth class of people who on one hand are targets for crime and on the other hand have the means to dominate others and push their own visions of what society should look like. We may see more of this type of behaviour in coming years.