The AI Interviews
Sherlock Holmes Explains How He Would Solve Cold Cases Today
An AI Interview With Literature’s Greatest Detective
Cold cases are the unsolved puzzles of our time with lingering questions without closure. But what would the world’s most famous detective make of modern mysteries?
In this exclusive AI-generated interview, Sherlock Holmes steps into the 21st century. With his razor-sharp logic, disdain for the ordinary, and famously cold demeanor, Holmes examines today’s forensics, digital footprints, and police bureaucracy… and offers a few critiques.
Interview Format
We prompted AI to respond in the voice, tone, and reasoning style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. The questions are modern. The answers are classically Holmes.
The Interview Begins
Q: Mr. Holmes, cold cases today often remain unsolved for decades. What would you do differently?
Sherlock Holmes:
A case grows cold not because it is unsolvable, but because it ceases to interest the minds tasked with solving it. The modern detective is distracted. Flooded with data, yet starved for insight. Give me the police file, a single photograph, and access to your internet, and I shall give you results. Not miracles. Just observation and logic, properly applied.
Q: With today’s technology, DNA, databases, surveillance, would you find it easier or harder to solve crimes?
Sherlock Holmes:
Easier, and yet more dangerous. Your world over values data and undervalues deduction. DNA, CCTV, digital footprints, these are tools. But they are not conclusions. A thousand terabytes of evidence mean nothing if the mind observing them is dull. I daresay Lestrade would spend more time scrolling than thinking.
Q: Let’s say you’re handed a 25 year old murder case. No arrests. No leads. What’s your first step?
Sherlock Holmes:
The same as always. Eliminate the impossible. Then revisit the timeline. A man cannot vanish without trace . He merely escapes the notice of those unwilling to look closely.
I’d examine not the crime, but the silence around it. Who stopped speaking? Who moved? Who remarried? And most critically, who benefited?
The answers are often found not in blood, but in behavior.
Q: Would you work with modern police forces?
Sherlock Holmes:
If necessary. Though I’d prefer not to. Bureaucracy, meetings, procedure… these are the natural enemies of reason. Scotland Yard’s modern equivalent likely requires four forms just to breathe near a crime scene.
But your modern “open source investigation.” The amateur sleuths, the podcasters, the digital archivists now they have potential. Passion without pay has always solved more crimes than rank ever has.
Q: If you had access to smartphones, what would you use first?
Sherlock Holmes:
The call log, the calendar, the location history. No different from a diary, but far more honest.
Though I must say, if Watson ever expected me to “text him back,” I’d have thrown the infernal thing into the Thames.
Closing Thoughts From Holmes
Sherlock Holmes:
You moderns are not lazier than my era. Only noisier. You chase information instead of understanding. But the truth? The truth still waits patiently. It merely requires a mind quiet enough to hear it.