Computers Laying Down the Law: Will Judges Become Obsolete?

In the last 50 years, technology has drastically changed the way lawyers work. Computers replaced typewriters, and voice dictation and e-filing replaced shorthand and courier services. In the future, self-driving cars may reduce car accident cases, and electronic financial transactions may make some laws outdated. It’s possible that computers could eventually replace human judges, thanks to advancements like Watson. IBM created a computer program called Watson that is really good at answering questions. It beat the world’s best players at the game Jeopardy! in 2011. Some people think that Watson could be used to help make legal decisions, but it probably can’t replace judges in trial courts because judges need to make decisions based on human instincts and evaluations that a computer can’t do. While computers can handle a lot of tasks, they can’t make judgments like a human can. If we let computers replace judges, we might lose the flexibility and fairness that comes from having a real person make decisions based on their experience and common sense. This could lead to a justice system that treats everyone the same, without considering individual circumstances. So, it’s important to think about what we would gain and lose if we let computers take over the job of judges. D’Amato believes that computers could help with some legal decisions, like determining court jurisdiction and choosing the right laws to apply. This could save a lot of time and money. He also thinks that a computer program like Watson could help with interpreting laws and applying them to different situations. But he doesn’t think computers should make all legal decisions, especially in appellate courts where judges review decisions made by lower courts. This is because appellate courts look at specific legal issues and facts, which can’t always be easily handled by a computer. The future of predicting legal outcomes using computer algorithms is already here. A web-based fantasy league called FantasySCOTUS was launched in 2009 to predict Supreme Court decisions. The league has been successful in predicting outcomes, but using a Watson-like system to eliminate human bias in legal decisions may not be effective. This is because the computer programs are still created by humans and may contain biases of their own. So, while computers can help with predicting legal outcomes, they may not eliminate bias in decision making. Using a computer like Watson to make legal decisions would be a bad idea because it doesn’t have life experience, common sense, or ethics. We want judges to make decisions based on their expertise and to follow the law, and we trust their decisions because we respect them as individuals. However, computers could be helpful for doing research and providing guidance to judges when making their decisions. Watson, a computer program, can help judges interpret laws by looking at the ordinary meanings of words. For example, in a famous court case about carrying guns, Watson could have looked at how often certain words are used together to help the judges make a decision. This kind of technology is already being used by lawyers to go through lots of documents for information. While computers like Watson can’t make the final decisions that judges do, they can help judges by analyzing lots of documents and finding patterns. It’s important to use technology to help with legal decisions, but we also need to make sure we’re in control of the technology, and not the other way around. Deep Blue, a computer program, won two games, lost one, and had three draws in chess matches. IBM’s Watson computer system, named after the company’s first CEO, can answer open-domain questions with short texts. Two people, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, won over $5 million combined in a game show called Jeopardy. Windows released a natural language system called Cortana in 2015. There are discussions about using computers to predict Supreme Court decisions, but there are concerns about the reliability of the data used. Some people are worried that computers might judge people in the future. A company called Lex Machina in Menlo Park, CA, has a huge database with information from over 128,000 intellectual property cases. They use this database to analyze settlement patterns and win rates. A multinational law firm collects data on the amount of time it takes to perform specific tasks and uses it to price its legal services. They also collect information on U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity cases to evaluate risk for their clients. The right to trial by jury is guaranteed in the Sixth and Seventh amendments to the U.S. Constitution. An article talks about how a supercomputer named Watson competed in a Jeopardy! tournament and beat human champions. The final part mentions a judge on Florida’s Fourth District Court of Appeal.

Source: https://www.floridabar.org/the-florida-bar-journal/computers-laying-down-the-law-will-judges-become-obsolete/