Technology and Robo-Judges: Prof. Priti Saxena, Department of Human Rights, BBAU, Lucknow

The exceptional technological innovation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) has given birth to Robots. These Robots are now replacing the human labour forces. Robots as efficient workers are performing several activities with due care and intelligence. AI has the potential to become more intelligent than any human. The application of Al is growing rapidly in business transactions, corporate dealings and legal services. Over the past decades, the AI in legal context has amplified expressively. The AI plays an important role in the socio-economic and legal development of the Nation because of its important increase in the legal arena. However the ethical use of AI and bots, like data protection, privacy and security issues need to be addressed in policies on AI.

The application of Robots in justice delivery system (termed as Robo Judges) has been considered as a remarkable development in different countries. Experts suggest that "Robot judges will have cameras that catch and recognize unpredictable speech patterns, a rise in body temperature without any reason as well as hand and eye movements. Information will be then analyzed to give an error- free judgment of whether a defendant or witness is coming clean. The machines will actually recognize physical and psychological signs of deceitfulness with 99.9% precision. Experts guarantee that "they will be amenable to communicate in all known languages easily and will identify if anyone is lying that couldn't be recognized by a human." On the basis of expert comments, it is predicted that in a legal setting, AI will usher in a new, fairer form of digital justice whereby human emotion, bias and error will have no place.

Starting from Estonia in 2019, countries like China, U.K, Australia etc. have created such Robo Judges with more accuracy rate while deciding the cases. Robo Judges are faster and quicker; they can process multiple cases at the one time thereby reducing the burden of courts. In India presently the total number of pending cases at the Supreme Court alone is increased by 7.3% from January to December, 2021. It has also welcomed judicial system aimed at assisting judges with legal research more efficiently, methodically and systematically than a human mind. In near future more countries may adopt such technological mechanism in its judicial process to

provide speed and access to justice. AI may turn into a replacement for human judges. Considering accuracy and speed in delivering judgments, there is a possibility that AI will completely supplant judges and legal officials.

However, it is to be understood that though in case of Robo Judges, there is no chance of biasness because it follows the set pattern of algorithm but there will be some issues like utilizing a predictive algorithm to decide the custody terms, maintenance, divorce and many more issues where human thinking to deal on the particular fact situation will be more apposite than algorithm. Recently Supreme Court of India has acknowledged the importance of AI and its entities but the then CJI Hon'ble Justice S.A.Bobde has said that "We are not going to let the use of AI spill over to decision making. It will fully retain the autonomy and discretion of judges in deciding the cases."