AI’s best use case may actually be in our judicial system

Source: The post is based on the article “AI’s best use case may actually be in our judicial system”published inLiveMinton 24^thMarch 2023.

Syllabus: GS 2 – Functioningof Judiciary, GS 3 –Science and Technology

Relevance: Role ofArtificial Intelligence (AI) in judiciary

News: The article discusses how AI can be adopted in our judicial system for improving its efficiency.

What are the key findings of the data?

There are around 47 million pending cases in the courts and more cases are added every year.

According to the World Bank’s Doing Business Report 2020, India ranks 136th out of 190 countries in the enforcement of contracts, which is lower than China (46th).

Further, the average time taken to enforce a contract in India is nearly four years which is more than four times the global average of 358 days.

What are the causes for the poor performance of contract enforcement and pending cases?

Friction in economic transactions: Lack of trust between the parties of the contract often leads to breach of the contract. This either leads to additional costs or reduces the volume of the contract transaction.

It also increases the burden on the judiciary for resolving disputes.Thus, the lack of proper enforcement of contracts leads to a market breakdown.

Vicious cycle limiting state capacity: The judiciary in India is often involved in checks and balances, i.e., holding executives responsible for the acts and policies.

The time spent in this by the judiciary reduces their time and attention to the actual delivery of services. This also reduces the overall capacity of the different branches of the government.

How can AI help in solving these problems?

Analyse and categorize cases: There are many types of disputes pending in the court. AI can analyze both,rulings and filings, to identify the majority number of pending cases.

It can also be used to conduct in-depth root-cause analyses for these cases, which may then be used to bring procedural and substantive reforms.

For example, if it is found that most of the disputes pending in the court are over land, then the dispute resolution mechanism could be changed to focus moreon settling these problems.

Provide a feedback loop: AI can help in providingreal time feedback of the caseload on courts due to theappeals made on the laws made by the legislatures. This feedback would help in improving the design of the laws formulated by the legislatures.

Must Read: How Artificial Intelligence can help in handling the pendency in courts in India?

What can be done going ahead?

China has already implemented a similar system known as Xiao Zhi 3.0 (Little Wisdom). The AI has helped to cut a judge’s average workload by over a third and saved Chinese citizens 1.7 billion working hours from 2019 to 2021.

Moreover, an estimate suggests that even a 10% improvement in judicial efficiency could help unlock at least ₹4,000 crore for India’s GDP.

Therefore, it becomes necessary to incorporate AI in our judicial system for better efficiency and for overall growth of the economy.