The Law Gazette reports on the less than enthusiastic response by Blair to “Robot Judges”. Here at HOB we find the debate interesting on a publishing front.
The French have recently made judicial outcome tech illegal and we’re hearing more about the issue daily.
And anybody who follows the major legal publishers will know that they have put a fair amount of money, time and effort into these types of technologies. Are we looking at another set of bad business decisions at senior management level over the past 5 years.
At the moment the push back on outcome technology in the US hasn’t been that strong. But will that change if the democrats gain an upper hand in 2020 ? Or may we suggest that if the Americans are seeing what the Chinese are up to in this field they might decide it is a path they might choose not to follow
A lot of money is at stake so we will be interested to see which way it goes
The Law Gazette write…
One of the stars of last week’s Artificial Intelligence in Legal Services Summit was retired Commercial Court supremo Sir William Blair, now professor of financial law and ethics at Queen Mary University of London. In a panel discussion on the Law Society’s report on algorithms in the justice system, he oozed informed scepticism on suggestions that human judges would be supplanted by AI.
Sir William is no technophobe – he enthused about the advantages of computer adjudication in repetitive small-value claims. (Apart from anything else, the availability of a neutral forum focuses litigants’ minds and makes them more likely to settle than to grandstand their case.) But he is thoroughly realistic about some of the more extravagant claims being made about our supposed robotic overlords.
For example, he noted that the much-hyped robot which greets visitors at the China International Commercial Court in Shenzhen is little more than an expensive way of directing you to the correct floor. And as for intelligent computers taking over the judgment of complex contested cases: ‘That’s still in the Isaac Asimov bucket, and may well remain there.’
https://www.lawgazette.co.uk/obiter/blair-unmoved-by-robot-hype/5070566.article
