> The software picked a location to patrol. Locations don't have cognition.

The software is being compared to Minority Report's precognitive mutants, who directed police forces to avert crimes before they happened.

Based on what suspects were thinking; it's a dystopian fable. This is just good policework.

To be fair it is not the case of the 'thought police' in Minority Report. Suspects aren't arrested based on what they are 'thinking', but rather the agreement of 3 supernatural precogs that can see events before they happen. You could replace the precogs with amazingly sophisticated AI, and the points in the film still hold.

So while I agree that this is mostly good police work the case here is of using data analysis techniques to predict likely suspects. What actually makes this story most like 'minority report' is that the suspects where picked up for prior offenses, but investigated essentially because an algorithm said that people in that area at that time are more likely to commit a crime.

I do think this is completely awesome, and a great idea, but I also think the title is not excessively overblown.

How do we stamp out ignorance? That's my question.

I call pedantic troll. Don't feed them.

The article doesn't mention minority report anywhere. This is most definitely "editorialising in the link title" and should be changed to reflect only the title of the article it's referencing (alternatively, the OP could have blogged about it, discussed similarity to precognition in Minority Report, and then linked to their article).

> to avert crimes before they happened

Not only to avert the crimes, but to arrest and charge the person before they committed the crime.