A few years ago I was hauled up in front of three magistrates in a south London courthouse, the culmination of a months-long bureaucratic nightmare that landed me with a criminal conviction for being unable to prove I had paid a £1.50 bus fare when my phone ran out of battery. After nervously recounting my tangled tale of woe, I was vindicated: I was told my conviction would be withdrawn. “I bet you’re very relieved,” the presiding justice said to me with a sympathetic smile. I was indeed.
But such human interaction in the judicial system might become rarer. Several countries are experimenting with using artificial intelligence-driven algorithms to mete out judgments, replacing humans with so-called “robot judges” (although no robot is involved).
The main arguments in favour of AI-driven adjudication revolve around two purported benefits: greater efficiency and the possibility of reducing human bias, error and “noise”. The latter refers to unwanted variability between judgments that might be influenced by factors such as how tired a judge is or how their sports team performed the night before.