Imagine a world where court judges perform their job without prejudice and without giving in to any pressure to deflect the law. Sounds Utopian? The judges of the future will function exactly like that, as they will be AI machines. As scary as that sounds at first, it actually makes a lot of sense when you think about it.
It is a well-known fact that AI is gradually replacing human beings in an array of professions: from bank tellers and bookkeeping clerks to drivers and sales people – the use of computers programs as human substitutes is becoming increasingly common.
But what about more sensitive occupations, like judges? Is it possible that one day our trust in computers will be so profound that we can actually appoint an AI as our judge?
As in many other cases, we are talking about a very long and gradual process, but interestingly enough – it has already started.
The Regtech industry
One of the less known, fast growing industry of our time is "regulatory technology" or "Regtech" in short. Regtech consist of various technologies aimed to help people and companies to deal with regulations more efficiently and affordably.
While regulation may not sound very sexy, there is actually a lot of money to be made in this field. The global demand for regulatory, compliance and governance software is expected to reach $118.7 billion by 2020. In accordance with that, many entrepreneurs and investors can already see the potential and more than $500 million has been invested in the Regtech industry on the first quarter of 2018 alone.
AI plays an essential part in the up and coming Regtech industry. In most cases, dealing with regulation issues requires mainly to obtain a great amount of legal information, process it and analyze it – things that are very natural for AI to do.
Several commercial services that offer AI assistance for lawyers already exist. These AI can help save lawyers a great deal of time that can be used for more high-level tasks, such as advising to clients, negotiating deals or appearing in court. Naturally, due to the fact that the legal industry is very competitive, more and more law firms are adopting this new trend and starting to use these services to get a leg up on the competition.
Law schools have also recognized the trend and are beginning to offer updated programs to educate the next generation of lawyers on using these platforms. Harvard, for example, now offers courses in legal innovation and programming for lawyers.
The AI lawyer
While AIs are used today mainly as lawyer assistants, their next evolutionary step is to become actual lawyers. Lisa is the world's first AI lawyer. Its purpose is to help create legally binding agreements quickly, inexpensively and mainly – impartially.
Lisa's creator states that while "a human lawyer cannot advise or act for both sides when creating an agreement, LISA’s machine-impartiality means she can save both you and the counter-party time and money, by starting at the middle ground and advising both sides as they build their contract".
Lisa currently offers basic preliminary services, but it may only be the first swallow of a much larger phenomenon. When analyzing the actual work of lawyers, what's revealed eventually is the fact that most of it is quite technical, and the gap between functioning as lawyer's assistant and functioning as an actual lawyer isn't as significant as one might think.
Along with the advancement in AI technology, computers will be able to successfully perform more complex legal tasks. Many of the AI Regtech services that today focus mainly on complementary legal products will probably be taken a step further and will offer a full and fully-automated legal service. As in many other proffessions, it seems that lawyers too will soon be replaced by computers. And yes – these are really good news. Well, not for the lawyers...
The world without lawyers
"What do you call 100 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean? A good start"
You have probably heard this or other "lawyer jokes" at least once. Lawyer jokes are a well-known social phenomenon reflecting the cultural perception of lawyers. There are many reasons for the lack of affection towards lawyers: common traits such as abuse of litigation in various ways, preparation of false documentation, client deception, procrastination in dealings with clients and of course – the ridiculously high fees that lawyers charge.
With AI lawyers, most of these issues won't exist. As computers don't have any personal interests, they can be counted on to work quickly, efficiently and impartially.
Today, millions of Americans simply can't afford the service of a lawyer while trying to navigate US courts, which ultimately leads to their discrimination . With the help of AI lawyers, justice will be more equal, as high quality legal services will become more affordable.
And as more and more people start using the services of AI lawyers, the next natural step for these machines will be to function as arbitrators: after all, what can be more objective than a computer? When both parties use AIs as their lawyers, the AIs can immediately communicate between them and reach a fair compromise within seconds. This could save a great deal of time, money and aggravation for everyone. Moreover – this could lay the ground for the next step: AIs as official state judges.
The limitations of a human judge
It's a well-known fact that the judicial system has many flows. One of its main weaknesses lies in the fact that human beings simply can't be objective. For example, many researches have clearly shown over the years that judges are affected by unconscious racial bias.
Bias is not the only problem. An interesting research from 2011 that examined more than 1,000 parole decisions revealed that judges were much more likely to accept prisoners' requests for parole at the beginning of their work day than near its end. Furthermore, a prisoner's chance of receiving parole more than doubled when his case was heard at the beginning of a session, rather than later on in one.
If this is not enough, more and more federal judges report feeling burned out and overworked due to a constant increase in workload. Something definitely has to change.
Official state judge?
While at first the idea of computers becoming official state judges may seem absurd, the more you think about it, the more sense it makes. Within the near future, there is no doubt that AI will be able to obtain the ability to handle trials and reach logical, equitable verdicts. While it's true that in many cases judging requires dealing with nuances and complex details, this is exactly where AI transcends the human mind.
The main question is – will we allow it to be? After all, trials can be very significant, up to the point of life and death. Will any person ever feel comfortable enough to lay their own fate in the hands of a computer?
In the future, when computers and AI are in charge of many crucial elements of our life, from driving our cars to preforming our surgeries, we will probably have much more trust in computers than we do today. Future generations will probably be puzzled at the way our generation trusted human judges, considering all of their flaws.
A dangerous potential
While there are clear upsides for the AI judges concept, there is also a frightening side to it – especially when we take into account the fact that no one really knows how AIs are going to evolve.
Nowadays, it's clear to all that the essence of computers is to serve human beings, but this may not last forever. Who knows, maybe a collision between man and computers is truly inevitable, as some sci-fi movies have predicted. In that case, it's not such a good idea to appoint computers as our judges.
But even if we overlook the AI-human collision potential, we should all be concerned about the AI-judges concept. It seems that the more society advances, the more it relies on automation to run its life. We all need to ask ourselves if this path really good for us? Some might argue that giving computers the authority to judge us is another step towards losing our humaneness. Notwithstanding, it's not clear if we can do anything to avoid this fate.
In conclusion
Since the industrial revolution, machines constantly replace human in all sorts of workplaces and with the development of AI, this process is constantly accelerated. There is no doubt that we all have a lot to gain from integrating AI in our legal system and inevitable process will probably lead to the appearance of AI judges, which will function much more efficiently than human judges. We just need to hope that there won't have any bug that will sentence us all death….