I suspect we have all whined and sniveled about our judicial system. Maybe you feel like you got the short end of the stick in court. Or, you've been called for jury duty and hated having to perform that civil service. And then, there are judges, some good, some bad, but all of them adjudicating arguments, presumably without letting their personal opinions to influence their decisions — right!
This might be one of the many areas in human life where artificial intelligence, AI, can be a great use to we sometimes bored, confused, or dare I say, ignorant humans.
Imagine a courtroom where there would still be a judge to oversee the decorum of opposing legal counsel, but no jury. There would be no court recorder, AI would be recording everything. There would be opening and closing arguments, as there are today. There would be witnesses and evidence presented. Most of the trial would look as it does today, with one significant difference, no grumpy, pissed off jury deciding a person's fate.
In this case, the only job in jeopardy would be the court recorder. There might be a few “professional” jurors who get off on sitting in courtrooms, but for the most part, the public would be happy not having to pull jury duty.
The judge would read the charges against the accused. The jury would be an AI jury. Every word spoken in the courtroom would be heard by the AI jury, unless the judge ruled something inadmissible. Then, the judge would instruct AI to forget that part, which AI would do unquestionably and without bias since it is not human. All the evidence would be fed to AI, with digital imagery where needed (This advance AI would recognize objects).
The closing arguments would be based on fact, not appealing to human emotions, since AI has none. Once that is done, AI would be instructed to review all the evidence and arguments presented and compare all that to all existing law going back to the beginning of our nation, depending on the type of trial. It might be civil, criminal, a property dispute, a libel suit — there are twenty-one types of law categories and tens of thousands of various laws to apply to the disposition of a trial.
Chances are, AI could go through these thousands of laws and precedents in a matter of minutes, perhaps less, and render a verdict that is absolutely based on established law. It would do so without putting an emotional spin on the verdict.
Most likely, everyone could stay seated in the courtroom, since the verdict would be only minutes away. At that point, the judge would ask AI to pass a sentence, again based on the charges, the law, and precedent. If there are extenuating circumstances; perhaps this is a non-violent crime and this is the first offense for the individual. This information would be provided to AI with instructions to look at similar outcomes and verdicts and render an appropriate sentence.
In the end, the judge could override the sentence handed down by AI, but that decision would have to be sent to a panel of judges to see if they concurred with the judge's change to the AI sentence.
Everything from every trial would be compiled in the AI judicial library for future reference. I'm inclined to think this is one area where AI could greatly improve the consistency and fairness of our judicial system by removing much of the emotional content and subjectivity that surrounds many of our trials.
If we brainstormed the processes used in the conduct of human existence that are distorted by emotion and outright lies, the list of candidates for AI's unemotional, fact-based approach to reaching decisions would be long. Such things as international negotiations and disputes over territory or trade barriers, etc.
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