The big idea: should robots take over fighting crime?

This is perhaps unsurprising, given the high-profile cases of crimes by police officers such as Wayne Couzens, who murdered Sarah Everard, and David Carrick, who recently pleaded guilty to 49 offences including rape and sexual assault.

AI can already search through millions of pictures and analyse vast amounts of social media posts in order to identify and locate potential suspects. Drawing upon other kinds of data, it could also help predict the times and places where crime is most likely to occur. In particular cases, it could test hypotheses and filter out errors, allowing officers to focus on lines of inquiry most justified by the available evidence.

Perhaps this would earn the trust and consent from the public upon which policing really depends.

Jo Callaghan is a strategist specialising in the future of work, and author of debut crime novel In the Blink of an Eye, published by Simon & Schuster.

Life 3.0: Being Human in The Age of Artificial Intelligence by Max Tegmark (Penguin, £10.99)

Blink by Malcolm Gladwell (Penguin, £10.99)

The Political Philosophy of AI by Mark Coeckelbergh (Polity, £16.99)