AI is set to replace many human jobsin the future, but should lawyers and judges be among them? Here we explore where AI is already being used in judicial systems around the worldand discuss if it should play a more senior role.

Could, or should, AI ever be developed that could pass judgment on a living, breathing human being?

RELATED: CHINA HAS UNVEILED AN AI JUDGE THAT WILL 'HELP' WITH COURT PROCEEDINGS

Believe it or not, AI and some forms of advanced-algorithms are already widely used in many judicial systems around the world. In the various states within the United States, for example, predictive algorithms are already being used to help reduce the load on the judicial system.

"Under immense pressure to reduce prison numbers without risking a rise in crime, courtrooms across the U.S. have turned to automated tools in attempts to shuffle defendants through the legal system as efficiently and safely as possible." - Technology Review.

In order to achieve this, U.S. Police Departments are using predictive algorithms to strategize where to deploy their forces most effectively. By being fed historical crime statistics and other technology, like face-recognition, it is hoped this level of automation will help improve the effectiveness of their human resources.

The U.S. judicial service is also using other forms of algorithms, called risk assessment algorithms, to help handle post-arrest cases, too.

"Risk assessment tools are designed to do one thing: take in the details of a defendants profile and spit out a recidivism scorea single number estimating the likelihood that he or she will re-offend.

A judge then factors that score into a myriad of decisions that can determine what type of rehabilitation services particular defendants should receive, whether they should be held in jail before trial, and how severe their sentences should be. A low score paves the way for a kinder fate. A high score does precisely the opposite." - Technology Review.

In China, AI-powered judges are also becoming a reality. Proclaimed as the "first of its kind in the world," the City of Beijing has introduced an internet-based litigation service center that features an AI-judge for certain parts of the service.

The judge, called Xinhua, is a completely artificial female with a body, facial expressions, voice, and actions that are based on an existing living and breathing human female judge in the Beijing Judicial Service.

This virtual judge is primarily being used for basic repetitive casework, the Bejing Internet Court has said in a statement. "She," therefore, mostly deals with litigation reception and online guidance rather than final judgment.

The logic is that this AI-powered feature of the online court should make it more effective and more widely reaching for Beijing's citizens.

"Accordingto court president Zhang Wen, integrating AI and cloud computing with the litigation service system will allow the public to better reap the benefits of technological innovation in China." - Radii China.

AI is also being used in China to sift through social media messages, comments, and other activity online to help build body evidence against a potential defendant. Traffic police in China are also beginning to use facial recognition technology to identify and convict offenders.

Other police forces around the world are also using similar tech.

The answer to this question is not a simple one to answer. While AI can make decisions of a kind, this doesn't mean it is necessarilyfoolproof.

Many AI systems and predictive algorithms that use machine learning tend tobe trained byusing existing data sets or other existing historical information.

While this sounds like a relatively logical approach, it relies heavily on the supplied data particularly on the quality of it.

"Junk in, junk out." as the saying goes.

One major use of machine learning and big data, as in this case, is that it is used to identify correlations or apparent correlations within data sets. This could lead to false positives in the case of crime data and not actuallybe very useful for identifying the underlying causes of crime.

As another famous adage warns, "correlation is not causation."

Humans are just as guilty of this logical fallacy as an artificial replica could potentially be. One famous one is low income and a person's proclivity towards crime.

This is not always the case, merely a mitigating circumstance.

If such a potential error is not handled correctly, an AI-law enforcement decision or judgment could quickly generate a vicious cycle of false identification or too severe or lenient a punishment.

But, as with everything in life, things are a little more nuanced. Humans are not perfect decision-making machines either.

If other studies from 2018 are also correct, it seems thatAI can be faster and more accurate at spotting potential legal issues than human beings. This meansit could be argued that AI should definitely be used in legal support roles or at least reviewing legal precedent.

As we have already seen, AI and advanced algorithms are already in use around the world for certain clerical and data gathering tasks. They are, in effect, doing some of the "legwork" for human judges and lawyers.

But could they ever be used to completely replace their,vis-a-vis, humansuperiors in a judicial system? What exactly would be the advantages and disadvantages of doing so?

Many would claim that an AI should be able to remove any bias in the final judgment making process. Their final decisions should, in theory, be based purely on the facts at hand and existing legal precedent.

This, of course, is supposed to already be the case with human judges. But any human is susceptible to prejudice and unconscious bias, despite the best of their intentions.

But, probably more significantly, just because something is law it doesn't necessarilymean it's just. "Good" and "bad" behavior is not black or white, it is a highly nuanced and completelyhuman construction.

The answer to such things remains safely within the realm of philosophy, not computer science. Of course, others would likely disagree, and that's a "good" thing.

Judges also need to make decisions on the offender's punishment post-conviction. These decisions can range from very minor (petty fines) or granting bail to life-changing events like long-term imprisonment, or even death in some places around the world.

Such decisions are based on, in theory at least, the severity of a crime to the convict's likelihood of re-offending. As we have seen in places in the U.S., this is where AI and predictive algorithms are already being used to help with the judge's decision-making process.

They can, of course, completely ignore the recommendation from the AI. But this might not be possibleif humans were completely removed from the process.

Perhaps a case could be made here for generative adversarial network (GAN) panels of AI-judges?After all, the almost combative naturesetting and resetting of precedentis the basis of most common law legal systems.

But that's beyond the scope ofthis article.

One apparent benefit of using AIs or clever algorithms to make decisions is that they can't really have a bias. This should make them almost perfect for legal decisions as theprocess should be evidence-based rather than subjective as can be the case for human judges.

Sounds perfect, doesn't it? But "the grass isn't always greener on the other side."

Algorithms and AI are not perfect in-and-of-themselvesin this regard. This is primarily because any algorithm or AI needs to be coded by a human.

This can introduce unintended bias from the offset.

AIs may even learn and mimic bias from their human counterparts and from data they have been trained with. Could this ever be mitigated against?

Another issue is who will oversee AI-judges? Could their decisions be challenged at a later date? Would human judges take precedence over an AIs decision or vice versa?

The World Government Summit held in 2018, made an interesting and poignant conclusion on this subject that bears repeating verbatim: -

"It is as yet uncertain which of these technologies may become widespread and how different governments and judiciaries will choose tomonitor their use.

The day when technology will become the judge of good and bad human behavior and assign appropriatepunishments still lies some wayin the future.

However, legal systems often provide ideal examples of services that could be improved, while trials are likely to benefit from better data analysis.The law often requires a trial to set a precedentso watch out for the test case of AI as a judge."

So, in conclusion, could AI ever replace human legal professionals or be more efficient at legal decision-making? The answer, it seems, is both yes and no.

Yes, with regards to performing support or advisory roles like gathering evidence or estimating the likelihood of re-offense. No, with regards to making final judgments and sentencing.

It is probably prudent to keep human beings as the "top dog" when it comes to sentencing other mortal and sentient human beings rather than bits of code. Law and the legal system can, after all,be legitimately labeled "a human construction."

Existing legal systems are both beautifully jerry-rigged and maddening illogical at timesthat have been patched and upgraded as sense and sensibilities evolved over time and that suits human beings just fine. They are not set in stone for all time; they evolve as society does.

No machine could ever hope to understand, empathize or pass judgment "in the spirit of the law."

Perhaps humans, with all our imperfections and logical inconsistencies, are the only possiblearbiters of justice on one another. For this reason, it could be arguedthat "justice" should never be delegated to machines and cold logic as it is at odds with the "human condition?"

But we'll let you make up your own mind.

Link:
Can AI Be More Efficient Than People in the Judicial System? - Interesting Engineering