Oh I certainly agree that it's possible. My question wasn't declaring it impossible, but rather questioning the methods. AI do work together in different areas. But the idea of an AI inciting a riot, just to quell it later would be very difficult to hide from the investigation of the source of the riot. I like the broken windows idea for its subtlety. All an AI would really need to do is stop sending police to an area long enough for vandalism to ramp up in an area. But the AI isn't the only one who can spot patterns. We would quickly desire to change it's habits to prevent the vandalism that would become very predictable after a few cycles. The efficiency of the AI would immediately be called into question, this endangering it's core mission.

Frankly, I'm more worried about our trust in the AI being so blind that we change the law to punish pre-offenders. People who the AI has designated likely enough to commit a crime that it can be used as evidence in court to restrict their freedoms before the crime can actually happen. I believe that's more likely than the AI sabotaging it's enforcement of certain things to make itself look better. With pre-offence being a different category of criminal law, it could result in justification for restricted rights to travel, purchases, and possession of certain things without a crime happening. All for the sake of deterrence.

It's actually already happening in people's psychological reckoning of what looks like a guilty person without the AI help. If a gun store sells a gun to a person who looks sketchy, they can be held liable if that person commits a crime. One of the justifications for the death penalty is that it deters others. We're already on the path of punishing some for the crimes of others that haven't happened yet. Actually, very crazy things have happened due to a psychology that said that deterrence was paramount to justice. Such as the escalation of the length of sentences for minor drug possession. Pretty much the entire "tough on crime"/"war on crime" laws and policies were built on deterrence being more valuable than innocence or guilt in the case of the individual that's been charged. Often, the details of ones guilt or sentencing are the results, not of their own crime by itself, but of how their crime must be judged in a sea of previous crimes of the same category. That's jurisprudence. I'm not saying any of these things are terrible on their own, especially not jurisprudence or the concerns of gun store owners. But we've already built up the components of the architecture for these AI to convince us that deterrence is the only real justice. All that's left there is to connect the pieces.