Can AI Be Fairer Than a Human Judge in the Judicial System?
Artificial intelligence has become an integral part of everything from medical diagnostics technology to systems that analyze electoral candidates and provide accurate information to voters.
However, there are still many AI skeptics, and especially those who question the role of AI in the justice system. Many legal leaders and institutions are curious about the efficiency benefits AI brings to the field. But the big question is: can AI help make the judicial system fairer?
The current landscape.
Many claim that the United States’ judicial system is one of the most robust in the world. It has a Judicial Commission responsible for dictating policies to other federal courts.
The Judicial body is made up of the president of the Supreme Court and 26 judges who represent the authority figures in courts, corresponding to courts of the first instance and the federal courts of appeal.
The U.S also has a state judicial system so that each state can focus on its own cases based on state law.
Each of these structures has a role in the United States judicial system, and each player knows what he or she has to do within it. However, due to the vastness of these systems, information management is cumbersome, especially when judges must decide which cases to attend and which aspects of the law they must take into account.
Error cases.
The American justice system is not without flaws, and a number of cases have exposed them. Judges have condemned innocent people because the information used to convict them was imprecise and poorly analyzed.
One such case concerns a man named Richard Anthony Jones, who spent almost two decades in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. His crime: having facial features similar to those of a criminal. Despite finding no evidence or DNA matches that conclusively identified Jones as the robber, several witnesses identified him after police showed them a series of photographs.
The failure of the judicial system.
Seventeen years later, the justice system managed to identify Anthony’s “double,” a man who actually committed the robbery that Jones served time for. The “other” man, nicknamed “Ricky,” fled, but witnesses identified Jones — who bore an incredible resemblance to Ricky — as the guilty party.
Once it was proven that the wrong man had been imprisoned, the judge confirmed that the procedures used in the original trial had not been the best. Jones was released, and as a “refund of his freedom,” he was offered a million dollars.
Will that money pay for 17 years of life in prison?
Craig Coley, 71, of Simi Valley, California, was also a victim of judicial inaccuracy and remained in jail for 38 years after he was mistakenly accused of the murder of his former partner and son in 1978.
Coley was released in November 2017 after DNA tests showed that he was not linked to the case. He received $21...