The UK risks becoming a "ghastly, Orwellian, omniscient police state", according to London's top police officer.

Cressida Dick, Commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police Service, called on law enforcement to confront ethical dilemmas posed by data, robotics and artificial intelligence.

She told an audience at the Lowy Institute in Sydney, Australia, that data is vital, but only to help humans "to make better decisions".

In comments reported by The Sydney Morning Herald, Ms Dick said: "We're now tiptoeing into a world of robotics, AI and machine learning... the next step might be predictive policing.

"People are starting to get worried about that... particularly because of the potential for bias in the data or the algorithm, [like] live facial recognition software."


There are already more than 600,000 CCTV cameras in London, according to CCTV.co.uk, making the city one of the most closely watched in the world.

And in June, Ms Dick used a speech at the Police Foundation to call for better use of data and public consent to avoid charges of a "police state".

Ms Dick said that, while police have to adhere to strict laws regarding the retention, security and deletion of data, other new technologies such as robots and autonomous vehicles presented challenges yet to be looked at by our legal system.

She asked: "If a machine kills someone, who is going to be held to account?"

When Ms Dick began her policing career 36 years ago, she recalls criminal records, fingerprints, handwritten intelligence on index cards.

She said: "DNA as a tool hadn't been thought of...and if you wanted an image of a crime scene, you had to call a photographer."

Now police officers wear cameras, access databases in the UK and Europe and can even publish appeals on social media and have members of the public upload video footage of crime online.

But the advancing technology has not only helped policing - it helps criminals too.

Grooming and radicalising can happen more quickly someone wanting to commit a crime - a terrorist bombing, for example - can find the equipment more easily with the power of the internet.

"The time for a tiff to turn into an argument, a fight and a murder... You know things are going to happen faster," she said.

Another example she gave was the many thousands of people who gathered in London to protest against Boris Johnson's decision to suspend parliament, something she said could not have grown so quickly without social media.