Researchers assert that China has created an artificial intelligence prosecutor that can charge people with offences with more than 97 per cent accuracy.
The dystopian machine can recognise dissent against the state and recommend sentences for supposed offenders, pulling people from the prosecution process.
There are already worries the system could be weaponised by the Chinese Communist Party with human prosecutors concerned about who would take accountability for the AI’s findings.
The tool can file a charge based on a verbal description of the case and was created and tested by the Shanghai Pudong People’s Procuratorate, the biggest and busiest district prosecution office in China.
The projects lead scientist Professor Shi Yong said the AI would permit human prosecutors to reduce their workload and allow them to only concentrate on the more complicated cases.
The South China Morning Post said that the system can run on a standard desktop computer and would press charges based on 1,000 markers from the human-generated case description text.
It was trained using 17,000 real-life cases from 2015 to 2020 and is able to recognise and press charges for the eight most typical offences in Shanghai.
These include provoking trouble, a word used to suppress conflict in China, credit card fraud, gambling offences, dangerous driving, theft, fraud, intentional injury and obstructing official duties.
Soon the AI prosecutor will be able to identify more kinds of criminality and file numerous charges against one suspect once it’s upgraded.
Professor Shi Yong said in a paper printed in the Management Review journal that the system could replace prosecutors in the decision making process to a certain degree.
Some AI technology already exists in law enforcement but this would be the first time it’s involved in pressing charges.
In Germany, image recognition and digital forensics are utilised to assist with caseloads, while China uses a device known as System 206 to assess evidence, a suspect’s possible danger and the conditions for the detention, but the system has no part in the decision making process and doesn’t suggest penalties.
One prosecutor in Guangzhou said that he had concerns about the new technology.
He said that the accuracy of 97 per cent might be high from a technological point of view, but there would still be a chance of oversight, and asked who would take accountability when it happens? The prosecutor, the device or the creator of the algorithm?
Any reader familiar with Science Fiction will know where we’re going from here. AI judges, AI Facial Recognition, Chip Implants, Digital Currency Control, and it’s actually no longer fiction because such controls are already in place.
And soon the Social Credit Score system will say that you’ve been a bad boy and now you face the evil AI that can press charges. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
In the end, you’ll be chained to a conveyor belt whilst the guilty verdicts are given out – all for the sake of efficiency and then you’ll be swiftly transported to your pod cell and appeals will be a thing of the past – doesn’t our future world look bleak?
However, this will only occur and will only work if we comply. Of course, in China, that’s not an option because as a state they will destroy you, but here in the West we must reject any group or movement that wants this, and this certainly isn’t Building Back Better.
I understand that technology has changed our lives, and there is a place for it in our everyday life. However, even as technology has grown we have sent robots to Mars, but there’s no robot that can wash a car better than a human being, and that being the case, how on earth can we allow machines to take over court judgements for humans?
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 