Artificial Intelligence in Judiciary

In News

• The Supreme Court recently started a first-of-its-kind project to transcribe its proceedings live using Artificial Intelligence (AI).

More about the news

• Suggested by Indira Jaising:
  • The suggestion to transcribe hearings was made by senior advocate Indira Jaising in the plea she had filed seeking a live telecast of court proceedings.
• Trial in process:
  • The AI transcript is seen on the live-streaming screen of the CJI’s court. 
  • The five-judge Bench headed by the CJI is hearing the case related to the political crisis in Maharashtra.
• Platform:
  • The SC transcription is using Teres, which is a platform used often for transcribing arbitration proceedings. 
  • The platform is run by Nomology Technology Private Limited, a Bengaluru-based company.
• Sharing with other lawyers & website:
  • The transcript will also be shared with lawyers who argued cases for verification, and is likely to be uploaded on the SC website every evening.
• Significance of this step:
  • The transcribing is the second major decision towards making the court more transparent after the SC’s decision to livestream its proceedings before Constitution Benches.
  • The court is taking a major step towards becoming truly a “court of record” for posterity to watch and learn court craft.

About Artificial intelligence

• About:
  • It is the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs. 
  • It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable.
• Significance:
  • AI would not replace people but create new opportunities in various fields. 
  • It works on data, and if we could train our machines, it could do wonders for us in milliseconds by automating processes. 
  • AI is creating new opportunities which could not be achieved by traditional technology.
• Applications:
  • Speech Recognition: 
    • It is also known as automatic speech recognition (ASR), computer speech recognition, or speech-to-text, and it is a capability which uses natural language processing (NLP) to process human speech into a written format. 
    • Many mobile devices incorporate speech recognition into their systems to conduct voice search—e.g. Siri—or provide more accessibility around texting. 
  • Computer Vision: 
    • This AI technology enables computers and systems to derive meaningful information from digital images, videos and other visual inputs, and based on those inputs, it can take action. 
    • This ability to provide recommendations distinguishes it from image recognition tasks. Powered by convolutional neural networks, computer vision has applications within photo tagging in social media, radiology imaging in healthcare, and self-driving cars within the automotive industry.  
  • Automobiles: 
    • While self-driving vehicles are not yet standard, cars already use AI-powered safety functions. The EU has for example helped to fund VI-DAS, automated sensors that detect possible dangerous situations and accidents. Navigation is largely AI-powered.
  • Cybersecurity: 
    • AI systems can help recognise and fight cyberattacks and other cyber threats based on the continuous input of data, recognising patterns and backtracking the attacks.
  • Fighting disinformation: 
    • Certain AI applications can detect fake news and disinformation by mining social media information, looking for words that are sensational or alarming and identifying which online sources are deemed authoritative.
  • Smart homes, cities and infrastructure:
    • Smart thermostats learn from our behaviour to save energy, while developers of smart cities hope to regulate traffic to improve connectivity and reduce traffic jams.
  • Transport: 
    • AI could improve the safety, speed and efficiency of rail traffic by minimising wheel friction, maximising speed and enabling autonomous driving. Tesla Cars use AI.
  • Agriculture:
    • AI applications in agriculture have developed applications and tools which help farmers inaccurate and controlled farming by providing them proper guidance to farmers about water management, crop rotation, timely harvesting, type of crop to be grown, optimum planting, pest control etc. use of drone to analyze the captured images and provide a detailed report containing the current health of the farm. 
    • It helps the farmer to identify pests and bacteria helping farmers to timely use pest control and other methods to take required action.
  • Health: 
    • It can be used for diagnostic purposes for various diseases, including COVID-19, and could prove very effective in remote areas where adequate health facilities are not available.
    • Artificial intelligence against Covid-19: 
      • In the case of Covid-19, AI has been used in thermal imaging in airports and elsewhere. 
    • In medicine it can help recognise infection from computerised tomography lung scans. It has also been used to provide data to track the spread of the disease. 

Way ahead

• If not designed and developed responsibly with appropriate safeguards, Generative AI can create harm and adversely impact society through misuse, perpetuating biases, exclusion, and discrimination. 
  • These systems can potentially access sensitive information, raising concerns about data privacy and security. 
  • It may also produce low-quality and less accurate information, specifically in the context of complex engineering and medical diagnosis. 
• It is essential to carefully consider the potential harms, threats, and concerns of Generative AI systems and ensure that they are used responsibly and ethically. 

Source: TH