IN BRIEF America’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is looking into how AI technologies can be used to create a « Digital Police Officer » or « D-PO » in the future.

Freedom-of-information requests filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation show the US Department of Energy-funded lab envisions cops may one day be able to partner up with a virtual crime-fighting assistant. D-PO would be capable of, for instance, tapping into facial recognition systems to alert a police officer on patrol to a suspect nearby, and can even offer advice on how best to apprehend the suspect.

The EFF warned against the plod teaming up with software like D-PO, citing concerns over inaccurate facial recognition matches and biased predictive policing policies.

« The good news is that in the emails we obtained, one of the authors acknowledges in internal emails that elements like a D-PO taking over driving is a ‘long way off’ and monitoring live drone feeds is ‘not a near-term capability,’ the digital privacy-focused non-profit said.