Summary

2023 was the year artificial intelligence reached the masses. Rapid progress will also continue this year. Artificial intelligence will undoubtedly find its way into the judiciary, as the development of judicial proceedings is not separate from the development of society. However, this raises a number of independent problems. For example, what is meant by the independence and autonomy of the judiciary – this time from the machine – should be redefined. In the case of artificial intelligence, we are not talking about automating any part of the judicial process (which was the subject of the previous industrial revolution), but about transferring decision-making from human to machine. It would be optimistic to think that a human being can control a computer (e.g. in a situation where artificial intelligence proposes a draft decision to a judge) – already today, a human being is not very good at it. On the other hand, it is inevitable that some part of the decision-making process will be delegated in the future. This would also be the case if the decision were made by a judge, but artificial intelligence would sift through the mass of information provided to find the evidence relevant to the dispute, provide the legal provision, and refer to case law. It is more a question of how much of the decision-making process we consider it possible to delegate to the computer. However, this needs a broader discussion, analysis but also a legal framework. All this has to be done before letting artificial intelligence take the case over in the court.

In the author’s view, artificial intelligence cannot be treated like an ordinary machine or computer program – it is dangerous. We need to be aware of the risks, and build policies and legal regulation accordingly.