Artifically intelligent ‘judge’ developed which can predict court verdicts with 79 per cent accuracy
Artifically intelligent ‘judge’ developed which can
predict court verdicts with 79 per cent accuracy
By Sarah Knapton, science editor 24 OCTOBER 2016 • 12:05AM
A computer ‘judge’ has been developed which can correctly
predict verdicts of the European Court of Human Rights with 79 per cent
accuracy.
Computer scientists at University College London and the
University of Sheffield developed an algorithm which can not only weigh up
legal evidence, but also moral considerations.
As early as the 1960s experts predicted that computers
would one day be able to predict the outcomes of judicial decisions.
But the new method is the first to predict the outcomes
of court cases by automatically analysing case text using a machine learning
algorithm.
“We don’t see AI replacing judges or lawyers, but we
think they’d find it useful for rapidly identifying patterns in cases that lead
to certain outcomes,” said Dr Nikolaos
Aletras, who led the study at UCL Computer Science.
“It could also be a valuable tool for highlighting which
cases are most likely to be violations of the European Convention on Human
Rights.”
The European Court of Human Rights
To develop the algorithm, the team allowed an
artificially intelligent computer to scan the published judgements from 584
cases relating to torture and degrading treatment, fair trials and privacy.
They computer learned that certain phrases, facts, or
circumstances occurred more frequently when there was a violation of the human
rights act. After analysing hundreds of cases the computer was able to predict
a verdict with 79 per cent accuracy.
“Previous studies have predicted outcomes based on the
nature of the crime, or the policy position of each judge, so this is the first
time judgements have been predicted using analysis of text prepared by the
court,” said co-author, Dr Vasileios Lampos, UCL Computer Science.
“We expect this sort of tool would improve efficiencies
of high level, in demand courts, but to become a reality, we need to test it
against more articles and the case data submitted to the court.
“Ideally, we’d test and refine our algorithm using the
applications made to the court rather than the published judgements, but
without access to that data we rely on the court-published summaries of these
submissions.
The team found that judgements by the European Court of
Human Rights are often based on non-legal facts rather than directly legal
arguments, suggesting that judges are often swayed by moral considerations father
than simply sticking strictly to the legal framework.
Co-author Dr Dimitrios Tsarapatsanis, a law lecturer from
the University of Sheffield, said: "The study, which is the first of its
kind, corroborates the findings of other empirical work on the determinants of
reasoning performed by high level courts.
"It should be further pursued and refined, through
the systematic examination of more data."
The research was published in the journal Computer
Science.
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