Top AI police chief reveals whether real-life RoboCops will patrol British streets

RoboCops are "unlikely" to ever patrol British streets, the police chief in charge of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has said. In an exclusive interview with the Daily Star, Chief Constable Alex Murray explained why the the sci-fi action movie will "probably" not become reality.

The top cop was speaking after launching PoliceAI the firm rolling out AI services to police services in England and Wales last week. On cyborg police taking to the UK's streets, Mr Murray said: "Our history in the UK is on policing with consent. It is about relationships, trust and legitimacy.

"Sir Robert Peel (the father of British policing) famously said, 'the police are the public and the public are the police'. We will never be a police state. I don't want to live in a police state.

"I want to speak to human beings as much as possible. If you look at all the investments that PoliceAI is making in AI, they are all things we think the public will massively benefit from and sort of would expect us to be investing in."

He added: "I do think there are ways you can use technology including mechanical technology like drones for example which we already use. I think there are ways you can see what is going on inside a house if it high risk.

"But having a machine purporting to be police officer walking down the streets of London is probably for the fairy tales." Mr Murray added that he doesn't believe AI operated drones will be carrying out lethal shots in the future.

He said: "I not qualified to speak from a defence or warfare point of view but already there are campaigns to stop autonomous lethal strikes.

"There are sort of agreements for that to happen. Having humans in the loop as they say is profoundly important."

PoliceAI, which has 50 employees and 75million in Government funding, is already working on three tools. The tech is planned to take on grunt work in cases to get them to court sooner, protect officers by scanning through horrific child abuse videos and analyse CCTV almost instantly to help detectives identify leads quicker.

Murray, who coincidently goes by Al (AL) to his mates, said: "If we in policing chose not to deliver AI, we are deliberately going to make ourselves more expensive to deliver worse service. We must deliver AI in a responsible fashion."

The top cop said the technology could also be used to advise officers as they approach a scene. "If you are sending an officer who is one year in and 22 years old to an allegation of modern slavery, that is really complex stuff," he said.

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