Researchers from University College London, the University of Sheffield, and the University of Pennsylvania have created an artificial intelligence (AI) “judge” that successfully predicted the outcome of human rights cases 79 percent of the time. Specifically, the AI looked at 584 cases related to Articles 3 (concerning torture), 6 (concerning the right to trial) and 8 (concerning the right to privacy) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The team said the results could be helpful for attorneys looking for patterns in the ways cases are decided. “We don’t see AI replacing judges or lawyers,” said UCL computer scientist Nikolaos Aletras, who led the study, “but we think they’d find it useful for rapidly identifying patterns in cases that lead to certain outcomes. It could also be a valuable tool for highlighting which cases are most likely to be violations of the European Convention on Human Rights.”
