The Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) will likely have more boots on the ground soon, across the island, to increase the successes its has been having dealing with crime, as artificial intelligence (AI) has been introduced at police stations to tend to administrative matters such as taking statements from the public.

“Please welcome Constable Smart to the Jamaica Constabulary Force, the newest member of the JCF,” Amber Group CEO Dushyant Savadia declared at the JCF’s Distinguished Mensa Lecture and Transformations Expo Launch held at AC Kingston hotel on Friday.

“AI-related police enforcement is becoming the norm across the world, and Jamaica will not be left behind. It is a huge next step, huge leap of technology advancement in Jamaica, and it is not something we are speaking will happen at some point, it is already happening. It is already live,” Savadia said, adding that the introduction of the technology will make more police available on the streets.

Describing Constable Smart as a “beautiful AI agent” built by his team at Amber, Savadia said the technology will give information in a human voice during conversations, even in the Jamaican dialect.

“It will actually speak with you in patois, English, or any language you want to speak with it,” he said then demonstrated how that system works.

When a caller dials 119, Constable Smart will answer the phone and say, “Me a Constable Smart, your law enforcement AI assistant at the Jamaica Constabulary Force. How can I assist you today?”

Pretending to be a caller, Savadia, in response to the question, asked: “If I have 10 points on my licence already, how many points do I need before my licence is suspended?”

In response, the AI system said, “If you have 10 points on your licence already, and you accumulate four more points, your licence will be suspended for six months. You need four more points to reach the suspension threshold.”

Savadia then asked the system to explain what was the purpose of the JCF.

Constable Smart responded: “The purpose of the Jamaica Constabulary Force a fi protect life and property, prevent and detect crime. They work to uphold the rights of citizens.”

Savadia next asked, “If I steal somebody’s car, is that a crime?”

The AI system responded, “If you take someone’s car and drive it without their consent it amounts to a crime and you can be tried summarily and you can face fines or imprisonment.”

Savadia explained that Constable Smart is ready and alive and possesses terabytes of data on Jamaican law.

Explaining the benefit of having the system record police statements from complainants, the Amber Group boss said, “When you go to a police station to give a report, you sit down in front of somebody who may be having a bad day from home and there are books to be written. Imagine now, all of our police stations in Jamaica, when you walk in there will be an AI agent waiting for you. You’d go up to it, talk to it, file your report, and it will ask you questions and even interrogate and ask you the right questions that it collects all the data it needs about a situation.

“You can imagine that it files the entire report for you into the database of the JCF without anyone having to sit down and write all of those things. That also means that the more we digitalise our police stations, the more we start looking at all of this mundane work being taken on by AI,” he said, sharing that the JCF system is so advanced, that there will be cameras picking up motor vehicle licence plates, who is driving motor vehicles, and issuing tickets automatically.

The Transformations Expo is scheduled for June 19-22 in Kingston and Montego Bay. The event provides the public with examples of how the JCF’s quality management systems and technology are revolutionising policing in Jamaica.