Companies are using AI to prevent and detect everything from routine employee theft to insider trading. Many banks and large corporations employ artificial intelligence to detect and prevent fraud and money laundering. Social media companies use machine learning to block illicit content such as child pornography. Businesses are constantly experimenting with new ways to use artificial intelligence for better risk management and faster, more responsive fraud detection — and even to predict and prevent crimes.
The Risks and Benefits of Using AI to Detect Crime
Companies are using AI to prevent and detect everything from routine employee theft to insider trading — and even to predict and prevent crimes. But determining whether AI crime-fighting solutions are a good strategic fit for a company depends on whether the benefits outweigh the risks that accompany them. The increased use of AI tools for crime prevention could cause external risks to cascade in unexpected ways. A company could lose its credibility with the public, regulators, and other stakeholders in myriad ways — for example, if there are false alerts that mistakenly identify people as “suspicious” or “criminal” due to a racial bias unintentionally built into the system. Or, at the other end of the spectrum, if they miss criminal activities. But given the wealth of data available today, and the rising expectations of customers and public authorities when it comes to protecting and managing that data, many companies have decided that using AI is one of the only ways to keep up with increasingly sophisticated criminals.