Ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the Japanese police force is expected to begin employing predictive policing using artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

If able to secure funding by April 2018, the Kanagawa Prefectural Police will be the first to use the predictive policing, which involves identifying crimes before they happen.

The idea behind the technology — determining whether one person is behind a number of similar crimes by looking at the data surrounding each of the crimes and thus predicting that suspect's next crime or next target — is that crimes could be prevented while offsetting the burden on local police forces.

Using a "deep learning" based algorithm that teaches the computer in real time, while it collects data, the system will have full access to the police force stats in addition to other factors such as time, place, weather and geographical conditions surrounding the crimes committed.

However, the technology is not without its critics. In addition to the number of concerns expressed by civil liberties groups, some experts are uneasy about the possibility that the AI could result in over-policing specific areas based on the algorithm findings.

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