A Colombian judge made a big splash when he announced that he had utilized the AI chatbot ChatGPT to prepare a judgment on a medical rights issue for children.
Judge Juan Manuel Padilla stated that he employed the text-generating bot in a case involving a plea to exempt an autistic boy from paying costs for medical visits, therapy, and transportation because his parents’ income was limited.
Padilla stated on Tuesday that ChatGPT and other similar systems could be used to “facilitate the drafting of texts” but not to “replace” judges.
He found in favor of the child and stated in his Jan. 30 verdict that he had contacted ChatGPT on the matter without saying how much he relied on the bot.
Padilla stated, “By asking questions about the application, we do not stop to be judges, thinking beings.”
“I suspect that many of my colleagues will engage in this and begin to design their judgments ethically with the help of artificial intelligence,” Padilla added.
ChatGPT generates responses to questions submitted by human users by using artificial intelligence and massive amounts of data from the internet. The court stated that ChatGPT fulfills duties traditionally performed by a secretary in an “organized, simple, and structured manner which could improve response times” in the justice system.
Rosario University Professor Juan David Gutierrez was among those who voiced concern at the judge’s revelation. Gutierrez, an expert in artificial intelligence regulation and governance, claimed he asked ChatGPT identical questions and received various answers.
“It is certainly not responsible or ethical to use ChatGPT as intended by the judge in the ruling in question,” he wrote on Twitter. He called for urgent “digital literacy” training for judges.
ChatGPT, developed by OpenAI, has taken the world by storm since its introduction with its ability to compose essays, articles, poems, and computer code in seconds.
Critics have expressed concern that it could be used for widespread cheating in schools and universities and could eventually replace human jobs.