AI tech, A job threat to lawyers & judges?

What is AI technology? “We want a Machine that, like humans, can learn from experience.” That was the dream of the man who cracked the Nazi code, Alan Turing, and AI can be said to be the dream of a man in his 19s coming true in the ’20s. Turing said that a computer could be artificially intelligent (an AI) if it could mimic human responses under specific conditions. Keeping this in mind, Turing proposed a test in which a human and a computer would answer the same question asked by another human, and this second human would be asked to guess which responses stemmed from the human and which from the computer {the Turing test}. Today I:e after almost 69 years after his death, Chat-GPT, an AI phenomenon, attempts his test.
1.1 Capability of AIs: As a layman, AIs are wunderkinder that can converse with a human-like equal and write all kinds of things, for example, essays, poetry, software coding, and write a novel on command while offering you different language options. All-in-all, as THE Hindu-based magazine “FRONTLINE” describes it, Chat-GPT (an AI-based app) is to the search engine what was the search engine to the yellow pages; therefore, one can imagine the enormous advancement. However, if I could say this more technically, I would say that AIs are the advanced form of computers whose working principals are based on Large Language Model (LLMs), which consists of a neural network with many parameters (chatGPT uses 175 billion artificial neurons according to reports and 500 billion pieces of text gathered from the web), trained on large quantities of unlabelled text using self-supervised learning, Generative pre-trained Transformer, and recently (on January 31st, 2023) an AI-based app qualified the Medical Licensing Exam, Masters of Business administration (MBA) program conducted by the university of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and AI-based another app Do Not Pay founded by Joshua Browder in 2015 is claimed to be world’s first home lawyer.
1.2 Global impact: The impact of AI & AI-based apps globally can be imagined by looking at the widening market of these companies. As per reports, CHATGPT gained a million users just five days after its launch in November, beating the record of 2.5 months set by Instagram, and within two months, the software had already catered to million unique users, the height that the most addictive app TikTok took nine months to achieve. Companies are investing billions of dollars in this technology; according to reports in January 2023, OPENAI sought funds at an estimated valuation of $29 billion. Also, according to reports, American venture capital firms invested $115 billion in AI companies.
AI in the field of law: While looking at the heights achieved by AI technology in the marketplace, one should not be amazed to imagine the future of humanity in the hands of Artificial Intelligence and robotics. There are ‘n’ number of fields right now that would be replaced by AIs in the near future, for example, economic productivity, writing field, technology research, medical science experiments, and autonomous robotic treatments, which would be even more trustworthy in comparison to humans, even, back in 2017, ELON MUSK rang out a warning for the transportation domain, saying, “transport will be one of the first to go fully autonomous” (according to the frontline magazine). Therefore, as a law student, the question arises inmind whether or not AIs could replace lawyers in the future. And for that, my answer would be NO for many reasons,
What is law? For a layman, I would say that law is a set of rules which govern human conduct in that particular state/country. For example, committing theft in India is a punishable offense, defined under section 378 IPC 1860 (Indian penal code) & punished under section 379 IPC; therefore is the law. However, the law ismore challenging to define in the true sense. Jurists of different times have tried their best to explain the law according to their understanding of it, but none of them, till date, has defined it flawlessly. While Aristotle, back in his era, defined law as “A SHORT OF ORDER,” the father of jurisprudence, John Austin, defines law as a “command of the sovereign backed by threats of sanctions.” When we are heading towards the definitions given by other eminent jurists, it would be even more confusing and conflicting to understand the definition of law given by any particular jurist of any time. Still, for the matter of discussion, we can say that none of them is totally wrong or totally right because of the changing nature of the law. It’s possible that back in the era of Aristotle, the law would be of that nature, and in the era of Austin, the law was changed in its nature. The question would be asked why the law is changing (or the nature of law) with the changing time. As a realist, I would say that with the changing time, societies also change, and law and society have a common understanding. They are never autonomous in their context; in other words, the law is deeply embedded within society, and it becomes necessary for the law to change with the changing society/time. The law needs society for its effectiveness and usefulness.
The law does not change absolutely, and the statutes are changed overnight. But what is changing is the meaning of the same statute by way of different interpretations needed accordingly. As an Indian, the best example of the interpretation of statute one could give is an interpretation of article 21 of the constitution of India 1950 post-A K Gopalan case. Some jurists, for example, J.C.Gray, even claim that the statutes are merely sources of law and interpretation of that statute by the judges is the real law. The sole purpose of Interpretations of law is to serve justice, to do equity, and satisfy the human conscience accordingly. Then the final question arises: Would AI technology be able to interpret laws to serve justice? And could it be possible for an AI to satisfy the human conscience?
Well, I will answer this question negatively because of the following reasons.
“AIs are just stochastic parrots:” Many scientists believe that AI (for example, ChatGPT) is nothing but a “stochastic parrot” capable of nothing more than stringing together random words that, at first glance, make some sense. The working principle of AI is nothing more than arranging the word from its endless word dictionary to create sentences using its billions of neurons. Therefore for an AI, it would be only possible to apply the law provided in the statutes as it is. Still, on a practical basis, one can see the enormous difference mostly between the statute wordings and the judgement given after interpreting it. Can’t Interpret
AIs are not aware of equity: Most of the interpretations done to any statute by a judge are equity-based. The most famous equity-based judgment, among others, is Shayara Bano v. Union of India,AIR,2017 Case (AKA Triple Talaq case). As a law student, I can’t imagine a machine deciding cases of such nature, having no actual law on the force and no power as a judge to enact the required law. And besides this incompetence, giving the best possible judgement merely based on the doctrine of equity. Therefore failed in Philosophy Of Law.
End Of The Judicial Intervention: As one of the pillars of democracy judiciary plays a very crucial role in countries like India. One of the essential roles of the judiciary is judicial review. Marbury v. Madison case gave a precious gift to the judiciary called judicial review, I:e power of courts to examine the constitutionality of any law passed by legislation & in that way, keep the supremacy of the constitution in balance. However, it becomes impossible for a machine to review a law made by a human, using its intellect, and to sense justice in that particular law. Most importantly, allowing a machine to make laws for humans would be unethical. All-in-all, after seeing all these flaws in this new rising technology, I can say that, as of now, humans can’t hand over the job of a lawyer, judge, or court to a machine, which can do nothing but mimic human responses.
(The author is a law Student at Central University of Kashmir. The views, opinions, facts, assumptions, presumptions and conclusions expressed in this article are those of the author and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon”.)
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