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India Badly Needs An AI Robot Judge To Clear Backlog Of Cases, Just Like The One Estonia Wants

Estonia's justice system is currently facing quite a backlog, with more cases to try than it has judges.

So rather than speed up promotions, they've instead decided they're going to automate the whole process, with a robot deciding cases for the first time in history.

The country's Ministry of Justice has tasked Ott Velsberg, Estonia's chief data officer, with designing a robot judge to take care the backlog in its small claims courts.

The constructed judge will supposedly use artificial intelligence to analyze legal documents and other evidence and come to a decision on its own. A human judge will however review those decisions, so it's not quite clear just how much this will speed along the process.

Make no mistake, Estonia does perhaps have capability to do this. With under 1.4 million inhabitants, it's actually pretty far along when it comes to digitizing and automating public service and government functions.

Their justice system won't even be the first in the country that's reaping the benefits of AI. Estonia already has algorithms scanning satellite images of farms, to determine of they're following the required laws to keep getting subsidies. They're even being put to work scanning resumes of laid-off workers to help find them jobs.

The problem is, court cases can involve a lot of nuance, which AI at its current level is unable to pick up on. It remains to be seen whether this AI judge will actually help Estonia deliver justice, or just warp the system and set them back even further.

India also suffers from the same problem, as you're sure to already know. Cases can be tied up in the courts for years, with regular civilians waiting for justice. At last count, there were about 2.91 crore cases, both civil and criminal, tied up in our courts. At least 42 lakh of these cases were pending in high courts across the country, and about 60,000 in the Supreme Court. All of these with about 17,400 judges to adjudicate.

The question then is, would you be more or less comfortable having an AI judge your case as opposed to a human judge? Would you be satisfied knowing it's less likely to be biased? Or would you be worried that it can't contemplate extenuating circumstances?

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