AI from law enforcement tool to criminal infiltration tool: critical issues and desirable solutions

Abstract

Advances in the field of AI have generated strong interest in the prevention and countering of organized crime phenomena. While it is true that, to date, the virtuous use of AI is found in a wide variety of areas, from healthcare to police operations to everyday life, it is equally true that the same tool can also be used by criminal organizations to infiltrate the legal economy in innovative ways. In fact, despite attempts at regulation by the European Union, there is a strong regulatory unevenness such that criminal organizations can move through the broad mesh of law and insinuate themselves into new legal markets. The reference is, in particular, to the use of cryptocurrencies. These, in fact, constitute a form of access to credit and a tool for laundering money that will then be reinvested to contaminate the most diverse markets (most recently, think of the market for impaired loans and real estate NPLs). Whereas before it was necessary to rely on exponents of the “gray zone,” in this case software engineers or conniving high finance officials in order to operate unmolested, today, due to the distorted use of AI, hypertrophic accessibility and weak regulation, cybercrimes are easier to consume, implementing the phenomenon that Interpol has called “cybercrime as a service”: a form of collaboration with casual, unaffiliated organized crime. In light of the above, is it possible to imagine preventive and law enforcement policy tools against crimes of a “digital” nature? Can the use of punctually regulated digital technologies and a digitization of databases that enable effective international cooperation be considered as a decisive tool in the fight against cybercrimes, or, are they themselves a picklock that criminal organizations could use to infiltrate new markets or consume new crimes?