Legal Speculation on Artificial Intelligence: Judicial Application of Artificial Intelligence in Taiwan (Part 1)

There is no doubt that Artificial Intelligence （AI) is the hottest issue at the moment. Its impact is not only on the technological or industrial environment, but also influences every corner of society. Under such an atmosphere, how to make Taiwan's judiciary with AI technology to create a better judicial environment should be an issue worth for public concern. However, public perceptions of justice have long been difficult to connect with "technology"; The impression of artificial intelligence on the general public is tend to be high-tech, and how it would fit into the judicial environment may be difficult to imagine. Maybe we can try to understand the present situation and look forward to the future.

Technology in count?  AI in count?

In 2015, the Court of Justice actively promoted the "technological court", hoping to use science and technology to make the judiciary more "open, transparent and focused, and effectively improve the trial efficiency" (The Court of Justice, Judicial Weekly no. 1737).

But in reality, the policy of the technological court is: a court that certifies digitized, computer-equipped projections; This is not censure, but the scientific and technological concept of the Court of Justice at that time was different from the imagination of the people. After all, computers had already entered Taiwanese society at that time when the Court of Justice was making such a big push for scientific and technological courts,  it was not worth making a big push as a political achievement.

More unfortunately, when senior judicial officers was advocating science and technology in the judicial court policy, the author had been complained by grassroots judicial officers, and even the scientific and technological court clerks , about the huge pressure brought by rolling the digitization work, and the court's computer hardware, system updated slowly, even didn't support the predicament of some video or audio format, but the limited funds was not used in the right place (such as changing court broken computers), maybe senior judicial officers did not really realize the great importance to the application of science and technology of the court, either observe the actual demand of the court. As computer systems, Microsoft's Windows 10 was launched in 2015, but in 2019 there were still local court secretaries using Windows 7 which launched in 2009.To be sure, there is little room for improvement in the efficiency of the recent comprehensive upgrade to Windows 10.

In the era of artificial intelligence, the influence of AI technology may change the current court activities and even the institutional norms, being as simple as digitization of documents or courts equipped with computer projection equipment. For example, in September 2019, the media reported extensively that the AI prediction system developed by Tsinghua University in Hsinchu could accurately predict the result of the court's judgment of power, which would effectively reduce the abuse of litigation. To be fair, the idea of let artificial intelligence be a judge in the 21st century is too quixotic. However, on some cases basis, it may not be unrealistic for artificial intelligence to assist judges in making decisions. Once AI technology is proficient and the system is properly designed, the imagination may come true. Worthy to be affirmed, AI technology has indeed begun to change the judicial environment with the efforts of knowledgeable courts and lawmen, though it is not yet obvious to the public.

First thing to know is what artificial intelligence can do

At present, AI is good at processing huge amounts of data (big data);However, "data" is not limited to the content of knowledge, but also contains the information of image and sound. In other words, when deal with work or activities involving huge amounts of data analysis, or audio-visual language judgment, there is potential for artificial intelligence to support or even replace humans. For example, self-driving cars, which have attracted much attention recently, rely on data analysis (traffic information) and audio-visual function (real-time road conditions), which are the strengths of artificial intelligence. As the technology
maturates, the profession of motorized vehicle drivers may be as old as the horsemen became a piece of history.

However, the current artificial intelligence lacks the five senses and emotions as human beings, nor can it understand the abstract meaning  in human society. Therefore, artificial intelligence is not competent for  activities that require emotional and sensory experience or grasp the meaning of things. Judicial work requires the processing of a large amount of information; On the other hand, it must also reflect the common sense, fairness and justice in the human world. So, for the foreseeable future, artificial intelligence should be able to work in partnership with judges, prosecutors, lawyers, etc.,
The developments in artificial intelligence recently make us to be optimistic that one day judicial practice will be able to make extensive use of artificial intelligence. The reason is that AI technology with "mechanistic learning" is increasingly mature, AI can collect, store and process huge amounts of data, and make inferential analysis of such data, and even make judgments or suggestions which are difficult for human. In this way, if it is used in court activities, it should save the labor and time of judicial workers, facilitate the general public to understand the legal norms, and draw the distance between the people and the judiciary.

to be continued：Legal Speculation on Artificial Intelligence: Judicial Application of Artificial Intelligence in Taiwan (Part 2)