It’s the unknown crime that we can’t yet imagine that we should be worried about!
— Jim Carroll
The opportunity
Provide individuals with a safe and verifiable way to manage their identities online and offline, enabling access to services while protecting personal data and privacy.
From “Daily Inspiration: Policing & AI - “It’s the unknown crime that we can’t yet imagine that we should be worried about!”” (November 2024)
But what about the future? From a crime perspective, it’s pretty bleak. There is no doubt that there will be a significant number of AI-driven crimes, wherein criminals will create deepfakes for purposes of extortion, algorithms that can hack into computer systems to commit financial crimes, or algorithms that can analyze and manipulate financial data to influence or cripple financial markets. And there is absolutely no doubt that there will be an increase in AI-related cybercrime. As more and more aspects of our lives move online, we’ll see cyber fraud, hacking, data theft, AI-managed identity theft, and much more. One estimate suggests that by 2033, 80% of all crimes will be cybercrimes. The big problem here? Perpetrators are often hidden behind anonymity and evidence is largely digital, and AI will only accelerate that opportunity.
What other issues might the RCMP be faced with? The list is vast. There are fast-emerging new digital identity crimes and synthetic personas - RCMP officers may need to unravel networks of AI-generated identities used for fraud, espionage, and misinformation campaigns. They may work with AI-driven analytics to identify patterns, trace digital fingerprints, and verify the authenticity of identities in cyberspace, which could become critical in fields from finance to national security. There is also a heightened risk of cyberattacks on critical infrastructure in Canada - everything from smart grids to autonomous transportation, which makes it a prime target for cybercriminals and state-sponsored attackers. The RCMP could play a critical role in securing vital national assets by detecting, investigating, and mitigating cyberattacks on healthcare, energy, and transportation networks, possibly using predictive AI to preemptively identify threats.
What about AI-driven fraud and deepfake evidence? The RCMP will likely encounter AI-driven fraud where individuals are impersonated using deepfakes or audio manipulation, affecting cases from fraud to defamation. They’ll need tools that can authenticate real versus synthetic media, which will be critical in maintaining trust in digital evidence. The ability to verify the authenticity of video and audio recordings may become a core competency in future investigations. ( This issue is of particular interest to me, as I was an expert witness back in 2003 in a Federal Court case as to the admissibility of the Internet as an evidentiary tool in a trial. Now imagine the impact of AI!)
From “Decoding Tomorrow: The Way Forward: #8 Banking & Financial Services - “For centuries, finance was defined by stability and caution. For the next decade, it will be defined by velocity and agility. The slow will not survive.”” (October 2025)
The crippling effect of legacy systems: Like other industries, at the heart of the innovation challenge lies a technical reality: operations are built upon legacy core systems that have become the single greatest bottleneck to digital transformation. COBOL!!!! These systems, often comprising mainframes running decades-old code, are architecturally misaligned with the demands of the modern digital economy. They create integration barriers, data constraints, and slow development cycles, with up to 90% of the IT budget consumed simply by maintenance.
Follow a modernization roadmap: Overcoming the inertia of legacy systems is foundational. The most popular approach, adopted by 47% of banks, is Progressive or Incremental Migration. This strategy focuses on gradually replacing components of the legacy system or layering new capabilities on top, minimizing disruption. For incumbents entering a new market, the Greenfield build—creating a new, standalone digital bank—offers complete freedom from legacy constraints.
The leaders who thrive will be those who move beyond the fortress of traditional banking and embrace a new identity as agile, technology-driven architects of the future of money. The future of finance will not be built in the bank vaults of the past. It will be coded with intelligent algorithms, secured on decentralized ledgers, and experienced through seamless digital platforms, guided by a new generation of leaders who are not afraid to build a bolder, faster, and smarter financial world.
From “I Was Told My AI Risk Keynote Was Too Dark. Then Anthropic Published the Footnotes.” (September 2026)
The premise was simple. Risk is not just increasing. The speed at which risk emerges, evolves, spreads and compounds is accelerating faster than the governance systems most organizations have built to understand and manage it.
The problem Anthropic describes is something very different. It defines illicit distillation as covert, industrial-scale efforts to extract the capabilities of frontier models and reproduce them elsewhere without authorization. The report describes fraudulent accounts, proxy services, false identities, stolen payment credentials and stolen API keys being used to gain access to models. It also describes user exchanges being captured and reused as training material.
The governance conversation can no longer stop at the model itself. It has to include API credentials, routing services, third-party wrappers, proxy access, identity controls, training-data lineage, model provenance, conversation retention and vendor relationships.
Read the full pieces on jimcarroll.com:
Daily Inspiration: Policing & AI - “It’s the unknown crime that we can’t yet imagine that we should be worried about!”
Decoding Tomorrow: The Way Forward: #8 Banking & Financial Services - “For centuries, finance was defined by stability and caution. For the next decade, it will be defined by velocity and agility. The slow will not survive.”
I Was Told My AI Risk Keynote Was Too Dark. Then Anthropic Published the Footnotes.