In China, an AI can decide to put you in jail

Chinese authorities go a step further than sci-fi film Minority Report. Researchers have created artificial intelligence (AI) that could identify crimes and allow the court to automatically press charges against criminals and suggest sentences to be applied. Is the parquet Shanghai Pudong, where the largest district attorney’s office in the country that the experiment took place is located, according to information from the South China Morning Post. According to the researchers who developed the AI, by relying on the description of a criminal case, it manages with an accuracy of 97% to provide the elements allowing to accuse the alleged culprit. L’AI is based on an existing model called “System 206”. He was already employed by Chinese prosecutors to support them in evaluating evidence and determining whether an alleged criminal was dangerous to the public. On the other hand, his expertise stopped there and he took no part in the decision-making process allowing the laying of charges and the proposal of sentences to the court.

When an AI does the dirty work

Today, AI knows how to sort out relevant information from what is not. In all, she knows how to identify and initiate legal proceedings for the eight most common crimes in this district, namely: gamblingsilver, theft, fraud, scams by credit card, reckless behavior, assault, insults and obstruction of an agent and finally, a Chinese specialty, political dissent. There remains the story of the remaining 3% of errors in the opinions stated by this AI. The question of responsibility arises in the event of a glitch and, for the moment, we do not know who will have to assume the errors of judgment of AI. This question does not prevent the prosecution from remaining very interested in its massive deployment in court.