‘AI would crack Madeleine McCann case and Robocop ought to take over’, TV cop claims
EXCLUSIVE: TV investigator Mark Williams-Thomas believes it is time for the real-life police to hand over the Madeleine McCann probe to AI after millions has been spent trying to crack the case
Robocop should take over the hunt for Madeleine McCann, says a top TV investigator.
Mark Williams-Thomas, whose work exposed Jimmy Savile as a monster, said after 18 years of bungling it was time for human detectives to step aside.
He reckons AI would solve one of the world’s biggest mysteries.
Police from Portugal, Germany and the UK have spent millions trying to crack the case without success.
Williams-Thomas accused cops of failing to co-operate because the different forces do not like each other.
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Star, the former Surrey Police officer said: “AI for Madeleine would be valuable particularly if you used all the police forces involved from the UK, Germany and Portugal.
“None of them have a relationship.
“If they all managed to have a relationship and they all shared every part of their data for each part of their investigation I think it would be very revealing as to what AI would identify.
“It could identify potential persons of interest either who are known or who aren’t known.
“It would definitely produce lines of inquiry.
“There is a lot of evidence. But it relies on the three countries sharing and letting AI into the investigation.
“It’s not going to happen at the moment because none of the forces like each other.
“Portugal have their view. The Germans have theirs. And the Met.
“What you have to do is understand how massive these investigations are and how when police officers are in the moment they are immersed in it.
“Sometimes they have their own fixated views.
“One of the criticisms of senior investigating officers is that sometimes they have a hypothesis and that is what they follow whether or not there is information that perhaps would challenge it.
“It’s very difficult for a senior investigating officer to go against their own mind and say, ‘Oh maybe I have got that wrong’.
“That is a failing of the human mind. The majority of people are very reluctant to be honest and open about when they’ve got something wrong.
“As a senior investigating officer you’ve gone on television and you’ve said, ‘we believe this and believe that’. Then some bits of information come in that say, ‘actually that’s not right’. “It would be a pretty bold police officer to say, ‘actually, do you know I got it wrong’.
“The difference between AI and a human being is that human beings have faults. AI doesn’t.”
Williams-Thomas, 55, whose documentary on Savile exposed the Jim’ll Fix It host as a paedophile following his 2011 death, said AI was immune to emotional bias and political pressures.
He said cops were unwilling to admit when they had got things wrong.
Madeleine’s disappearance, at the age of three, from a holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007 has baffled investigators ever since.
