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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday August 22 2019, @09:31AM   Printer-friendly
from the here-comes-the-judge dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow3196

China Now Has AI-Powered Judges

Beijing is bringing AI judges to court. The move, proclaimed by China as "the first of its kind in the world", comes from the Beijing Internet Court, which has launched an online litigation service center featuring an artificially intelligent female judge, with a body, facial expressions, voice, and actions all modeled off a living, breathing human (one of the court's actual female judges, to be exact).

[...] But conspiracy theorists can breathe a sigh of relief — the AI apocalypse is not nigh (yet). This virtual judge, whose abilities are based on intelligent speech and image synthesizing technologies, is to be used for the completion of “repetitive basic work” only, according to the Beijing Internet Court’s official statement on the move. That means she’ll mostly be dealing with litigation reception and online guidance. Other features of the online service center include a mobile micro-court and an official Weitao (Taobao's social-media service for brands) account.

Rather than replacing human-populated courts, Beijing's Internet Court’s stated mission is to use new technology to provide more effective, more widely-reaching public services. According to court president Zhang Wen, integrating AI and cloud computing with the litigation service system will allow the public to better reap the benefits of technological innovation in China.

For the first time in China, #AI assistive technology was used in a trial at Shanghai No 2 Intermediate People's Court on Wed, the Legal Daily reported. When the judge, public prosecutor or defender asked the AI system, it displayed all related evidence on a courtroom screen. pic.twitter.com/fEI7cR5U3T

— People's Daily, China (@PDChina) January 25, 2019


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The Panopticon is Already Here: China's Use of "Artificial Intelligence" 89 comments

The Panopticon Is Already Here (archive)

Xi Jinping is using artificial intelligence to enhance his government's totalitarian control—and he's exporting this technology to regimes around the globe.

[...] Xi has said that he wants China, by year's end, to be competitive with the world's AI leaders, a benchmark the country has arguably already reached. And he wants China to achieve AI supremacy by 2030.

Xi's pronouncements on AI have a sinister edge. Artificial intelligence has applications in nearly every human domain, from the instant translation of spoken language to early viral-outbreak detection. But Xi also wants to use AI's awesome analytical powers to push China to the cutting edge of surveillance. He wants to build an all-seeing digital system of social control, patrolled by precog algorithms that identify potential dissenters in real time.

[...] China already has hundreds of millions of surveillance cameras in place. Xi's government hopes to soon achieve full video coverage of key public areas. Much of the footage collected by China's cameras is parsed by algorithms for security threats of one kind or another. In the near future, every person who enters a public space could be identified, instantly, by AI matching them to an ocean of personal data, including their every text communication, and their body's one-of-a-kind protein-construction schema. In time, algorithms will be able to string together data points from a broad range of sources—travel records, friends and associates, reading habits, purchases—to predict political resistance before it happens. China's government could soon achieve an unprecedented political stranglehold on more than 1 billion people.

Early in the coronavirus outbreak, China's citizens were subjected to a form of risk scoring. An algorithm assigned people a color code—green, yellow, or red—that determined their ability to take transit or enter buildings in China's megacities. In a sophisticated digital system of social control, codes like these could be used to score a person's perceived political pliancy as well.

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  • (Score: 2, Touché) by choose another one on Thursday August 22 2019, @10:39AM (9 children)

    by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 22 2019, @10:39AM (#883540)

    This is China, how long before "repetitive basic work" is extended to "sentence-defendant; shoot-in-head; bill-relatives-for-bullet" ?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @11:04AM (7 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @11:04AM (#883556)

      # Look Ma, I can code AI!

      while (1) { return "Guilty" }

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:36PM (6 children)

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:36PM (#883580) Journal

        That while loop is pointless because it will be terminated as soon as the return statement is executed. That is, that code is exactly equivalent to just the return statement.

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:12PM (2 children)

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:12PM (#883619) Journal

          10 PRINT "GUILTY"
          20 GOSUB 10
          30 END

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
          • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:32PM (1 child)

            by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:32PM (#883671) Journal

            Stack overflow. ;-)

            --
            The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
            • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 22 2019, @04:30PM

              by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 22 2019, @04:30PM (#883695) Journal

              The recursion will end once it hits the RETURN statement. Just be patient!

              --
              People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:45PM (2 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:45PM (#883638)

          As long is ran once per trial it works.

          • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:17PM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:17PM (#883665)

            Never heard of multiple charges?

            • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 22 2019, @04:31PM

              by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 22 2019, @04:31PM (#883696) Journal

              Positive and Negative?

              --
              People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:10PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:10PM (#883618) Journal

      Please realize that defendants are not simply railroaded through the system. They will be represented by an AI-Powered defense lawyer.

      This will make things easier for the AI-Powered prosecutor.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 22 2019, @11:23AM (5 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday August 22 2019, @11:23AM (#883566)

    1980s Dade County had "video tape" traffic court judges... you show up, never know if you might get a real judge, but 9/10 times it would be the video tape which read you your options: 1) Guilty, pay and get points, 2) No Contest, pay and go to traffic school, 3) Not Guilty, reschedule to see a real judge.

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:17PM (4 children)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:17PM (#883621) Journal

      While this strips dignity from the process, I'm not sure it alters the outcome. Even in front of a human judge, those three options are your ONLY options. Any attempt at anything other than selecting from those three will not be tolerated by a human judge. In fact it could get you in contempt of court.

      So really your options are:
      [_] Guilty, pay and win points!
      [_] No Contest, pay and go to online traffic school
      [_] Not Guilty, schedule the process to prepare for trial
      [x] Contempt of court

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:04PM

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:04PM (#883658)

        You can ALWAYS go for contempt of court, the bailiff will happily remand you to a courtroom with a real judge if you've got the attitude for it.

        IMO, the video taped judge did two things: 1) he raised the cost of pleading not guilty to two trips to court, where a single trip to court is already more costly than just paying the fine in most cases..., and 2) he also gave a 100% available (when you've got the video tape judge) option to plead no contest and take traffic school for no points on your license, human judges didn't always give this option - depending on priors, etc., but the video tape judge would allow infinite elections to traffic school. In other words, you still have the option to plead no contest with a human judge, but the human judge has the option to throw you under the jail if he believes you deserve it - so judgy.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
      • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:12PM (2 children)

        by hendrikboom (1125) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:12PM (#883661) Homepage Journal

        In Manitoba I remember one could plead "Guilty with explanation."

        • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:20PM (1 child)

          by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:20PM (#883667) Journal

          Will the explanation result in an increased fine?

          Or lower the fine, but then significantly increase the court costs for having to listen to the explanation.

          I'm not sure what good an explanation would actually do if, in fact, you were speeding and acknowledge that you were speeding.

          --
          People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
          • (Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday August 23 2019, @01:15AM

            by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Friday August 23 2019, @01:15AM (#883882)

            Back in the '70s that was an option here. You went to the scheduling window, plead not guilty with an explanation and got a reduced fine. There was a level, I think 15 over, where a live court appearance was required, but for lesser infractions it was just a way to avoid court and get a reduced fine. It didn't matter what the explanation was, UFO's were chasing me was just as valid as the speed sign was covered in snow and I didn't realize the speed was reduced.
            It didn't prevent points on your license, just reduced the fine from a strait guilty plea and eliminated a court appearance.

            --
            Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
  • (Score: 2) by jasassin on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:08PM (8 children)

    by jasassin (3566) <jasassin@gmail.com> on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:08PM (#883571) Homepage Journal

    Watch the movie Lexx. Scary dystopian far future. The judges are holographic, and you are guaranteed to lose an organ.

    --
    jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0xE6462C68A9A3DB5A
    • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:23PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:23PM (#883624) Journal

      Electric Eels [wikipedia.org] have electric organs. It would be a shame to loose one of those. Especially if it predates MIDI. But then there is the question of "which of these two men has the largest organ?" This naturally leads to the followup question of whether the pipes, external speakers or other apparatus are counted in the size, or is only the keyboard equipment counted? Finally a lost organ might be found after a careful search is conducted.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:47PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:47PM (#883640)

      Well, chinese prisoners lose organs without complicated hollograms, chinese are way ahead of this epoch.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @09:42AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 24 2019, @09:42AM (#884649)

        Only the evil ones

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Thursday August 22 2019, @08:49PM (4 children)

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday August 22 2019, @08:49PM (#883784) Homepage
      I can find no movie, only a 4-season TV thing.
      --
      Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday August 23 2019, @12:34AM (2 children)

        by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Friday August 23 2019, @12:34AM (#883867)

        The first season were originally 4 movies entitled "Tales from an Alternate Universe" on Showtime. They were cut into the first season. Eva Habermann was Zev who was killed at the end of the forth movie, Xenia Seeberg was Xev reconstituted from leftover Eva goo for the next three seasons.
        Dark and twisted, one of my all time favorite series (4th season kinda sucked, like BSG, finding Earth is never a good thing for a series).
        As the commercials of the time said, "are you ready for some strange?"

        --
        Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Friday August 23 2019, @08:49AM (1 child)

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Friday August 23 2019, @08:49AM (#883995) Homepage
          Watched the first one last night. It's terrible. Really terrible. However, it is so bad that it's good.
          --
          Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
          • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday August 23 2019, @09:54AM

            by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Friday August 23 2019, @09:54AM (#884009)

            Yeah, that's an accurate description.
            It gets weirder from there.
            It was pretty risque for its era, and would never get made today in the 'I'm offended by everything climate.'

            I love a lot of bad movies though...MST3K fan since the first episodes.
            My 'Skull and Crossbones' movie collection consists of a lot of so bad they're good movies.

            --
            Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
      • (Score: 3, Informative) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday August 23 2019, @01:03AM

        by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Friday August 23 2019, @01:03AM (#883879)

        Oh yeah, WHY it was an awesome series:

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5m8uSwZPHcU [youtube.com]

        --
        Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:38PM (3 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:38PM (#883582) Journal
    It sounds like some higher up is infatuated with AI. It's bizarre how the story mentions all these weird projects without giving a single reason why anyone, much less China, would need them. Labor isn't expensive after all, and these tasks aren't something that would cost a lot to employ a person to provide (news talking head, boilerplate law, and cleaning trains).
    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:49PM

      by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Thursday August 22 2019, @12:49PM (#883583) Journal

      Call it a tech demo. Meant to make some headlines but not something that will see widespread use.

      That means she’ll mostly be dealing with litigation reception and online guidance. Other features of the online service center include a mobile micro-court and an official Weitao (Taobao's social-media service for brands) account.

      Sounds like the U.S. Army chatbot.

      --
      [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by SomeGuy on Thursday August 22 2019, @01:06PM

      by SomeGuy (5632) on Thursday August 22 2019, @01:06PM (#883586)

      It sounds like some higher up is infatuated with AI.

      This is exactly why this sort of stuff happens.

      It reminds me of the stories from a way while back back where stores were going to start putting video screens in shopping carts to play advertisements. Any brain dead 2-year old could tell you a dozen reasons why that wouldn't work well, but somewhere some higher up was sold on that crap. How many shopping carts have those today? None.

      And here, I get my panties in a wad just talking to telephony voice recognition systems "say 'yes' for yes or 'no' for no." Why can't I just press "2" like any other fucking system? It can't hear me with all the noise here! "I'm sorry, I didn't understand that!" DOES THE WORD DE-RESOLUTION MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU, BITCH!

      Wake me up when they replace lawyers with AI. I might actually get behind that.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:36PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:36PM (#883674)

      It's because it empowers the grunch. Workers can strike AI can just be retrained.

  • (Score: 2) by Alfred on Thursday August 22 2019, @01:37PM (4 children)

    by Alfred (4006) on Thursday August 22 2019, @01:37PM (#883601) Journal
    I did not expect China to allow women to have such positions. I'll have to go back to deriding them for just communism now.
    • (Score: 3, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:25PM (2 children)

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:25PM (#883626) Journal

      It isn't a real women. It is an AI robot. So you cannot say you have been Miss. Judge'd.

      --
      People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:51PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:51PM (#883642)

        Horatio meme: put glasses on .... YEAAAAH!

        Sorry for the meme reference, just couldn't resist.

      • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:46PM

        by maxwell demon (1608) on Thursday August 22 2019, @03:46PM (#883682) Journal

        From the summary:

        […] modeled off a living, breathing human (one of the court's actual female judges, to be exact).

        --
        The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday August 23 2019, @12:57AM

      by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Friday August 23 2019, @12:57AM (#883876)

      Communist? Naw, more like Authoritarian Capitalism.
      Hell, the government of China is more Capitalist than we are!
      They just openly control it from the barrel of a gun.
      True Communism (IMHO) cannot exist beyond the tribal stage of development, when everyone works for the good of the tribe or they all die.
      Once their is plenty of food, true Communism dies and is replaced by Warlords, Authoritarians, Monarchies, doo-doo heads etc.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_capitalism#China [wikipedia.org]

      --
      Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:27PM (3 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 22 2019, @02:27PM (#883627) Journal

    How about AI-Powered congress critters?

    I mean if the judicial branch can be AI, why not the legislative branch?

    Oh! Oh! I know!!! What about the executive branch?

    And why do I call them "branches"? Any good circus has three rings: executive, legislative and judicial.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @05:26PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @05:26PM (#883724)

      Congress already is AI. They're too stupid to think for themselves so they let big corporations buy their decision.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @05:53PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 22 2019, @05:53PM (#883738)

      The executive branch hasn't been an AI for the past several administrations? Here I was thinking it was all Memorex. It explained so much!

      • (Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday August 23 2019, @12:26AM

        by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Friday August 23 2019, @12:26AM (#883865)

        Yeah, Artificial but not intelligent. True since at least Reagan.

        --
        Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
  • (Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday August 23 2019, @12:14AM

    by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Friday August 23 2019, @12:14AM (#883861)

    https://youtu.be/OFRe4nl8ugM?t=1348 [youtu.be]

    Camp and corn become reality.
    Idiocracy becomes prescient.
    And apparently so does Lexx.

    --
    Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
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