The Chief Justice of India may have cleared the air on India’s courts using artificial intelligence (AI) in their decision-making process, but some concerns remain.
What did the CJI say?
- In a measured gesture, CJI SA Bobde clarified a statement said that using technologies such as AI could help deliver justice swiftly.
- The CJI had also said that such technologies would help streamline hearing of cases while enabling better court management.
Concerns –
- The statement made many experts raise concerns over the potential abuse of AI in the judicial decision-making processes.
- Bringing AI into judicial matters is a problem because it involves, among other things, the use of Big Data, which, as data scientists and rights activists have pointed out, reflect dark human biases.
- Using large amounts of historical data to assess what is right and wrong according to the law may seem interesting, but as a recent paper — The AI is now in session: The impact of digitalisation on courts — by a team of Hungarian law experts showed, beyond the obvious ethical issues (such as human biases creeping into AI and resultant discrimination), there are economic issues also to be considered.
Conclusion –
If legal systems rush headlong into AI, it may not only end up sending the wrong people to jail, but also do so at a pace that’s dangerous and cannot be easily corrected. Machines, as things stand, now cannot exercise creative liberty while making decisions, since they rely on the data fed.
Source – The Hindu Business Line
QUESTION – Discuss the ethical implications of inducting new technologies such as ‘Artificial Intelligence’ into the judicial machinery of the Indian State.
