The AI trend is in full swing, and the Home Ministry looks to be wanting to ride the wave in an interesting, if not chilling, way. Home Minister Saifuddin Nasution Ismail said that the ministry is “embracing AI to enhance national security and improve public service delivery” by using it to predict crime, among other things.
According to the Malay Mail, the ministry is implementing its new policy theme, “AI for KDN, KDN for AI”, that sees the integration of machine learning tools across its key agencies. This includes the police, immigration, and national registration departments.
The report cites the minister as saying that “if we want to reduce crime, we must target the ‘mother and father of all crimes’, the gateway offences”. For context, gateway offences refers to smaller crimes that don’t usually get much legal attention, but then gets the perpetrator to commit bigger crimes.
One result of this integration is the identification of patterns that showed certain offenders were likely to go on and commit 31 other violent crimes, following the analysis of 1.2 million criminal case records. With this, the minister says that “AI is no longer a choice; it is a necessity”. Accordingly, the ministry is also upscaling officers at universities like UKM and UiTM to build its internal AI capabilities.
(Source: Malay Mail)
