A prominent British judge has suggested that artificial intelligence could one day replace judges in some UK court cases.
Geoffrey Vos, Master of the Rolls of England and Wales, has stated that in the future, AI could be utilised to replace human adjudicators in some UK court cases.
The senior judge urged the legal professions in the countries to continue pursuing the use of generative artificial intelligence — such as ChatGPT — both inside and outside the courtroom, a stance that appears to be at odds with others in the tech sector who have warned that research should be halted until regulations can catch up with advances.
“You will probably all have seen that when GPT-3.5 took the Bar exams (US ones, I imagine) not long ago, it came in the bottom 10 per cent, but when GPT-4 took them just recently, it came in the top 10 per cent,” he said while addressing a crowd as part of the McNair Lecture series.
“This demonstrates the speed at which generative AI is developing. It perhaps makes the point that there is a real possibility that AI may become more intelligent and capable than humans,” he added. “It is obvious that these advances will affect the legal world as much as any other part of our society.”
In particular, the senior judge referenced the high cost of commercial cases in front of the UK court system, saying that A.I. adjudication in some UK courtrooms could ultimately make the civil justice system in the country both cheaper and quicker for businesses, allowing resolutions to be arrived at more easily.
He also stated that such automated decision-making should be explicitly identified, and Vos sees the ability to appeal a decision to a human court system as a need for such a shift to be enacted.