The Estonian Ministry of Justice has officially requested Ott Velsberg for designing a robot judge for the sake of taking care of the backlog of small claims court disputes. For those of you who are not aware; Ott Velsberg is the chief data officer of Estonia.
The artificial intelligence-powered ‘judge’ will be analyzing legal documents and other pertinent information to make a decision. Although a human judge will have the opportunity for revising these decisions, the project in itself is an amazing example of justice being served using artificial intelligence.
Estonia is a small Northern European nation with fewer than 1.4 million people living in it. It has made huge leaps in terms of digitizing, streamlining, and modernizing its government functions. Estonia is famous for its e-residency program that enables anyone to have access to the Estonian government services. The digital national ID smartcard is the next-generation of government-issued ID cards despite the security vulnerabilities that it comes with.
It is not just the court system of Estonia that is getting an AI overhaul. In fact, AI has already managed to automate a variety of government functions. Artificial intelligence is being used for scanning satellite images using algorithms for ascertaining if subsidized farming operations are abiding by the rules that have been mandated by the government. Artificial intelligence algorithms are also being employed for scanning the resumes of workers that have been laid-off to help them find jobs.
This won’t, however, be the first time that an algorithm has been used for taking care of a legal matter. A UK-based chatbot was used for overturning more than 100,000 parking tickets in New York and London. Nonetheless, it is paving the way for artificial intelligence to become more integrated with our lives and to help governments streamline their operations and clearing up backlogs.
