Legal debut: Judge used ChatGPT to reach verdict

News » Science & Technology

The case before Judge Juan Manuel Padilla Garcia involved a dispute between a health insurance company and the parents of a child with autism. The court used AI to pose legal questions in the case and included the answers in its decision.

“The arguments for this decision will be determined taking into account the use of artificial intelligence. The purpose of including these AI-generated texts is in no way to replace the judge's decision. We strive to optimize the time spent on preparing court decisions after confirming the information provided by artificial intelligence”, – Garcia wrote.

According to the court document, the AI ​​was asked the following legal questions:

• “Is a minor child with autism exempt from paying for treatment?”
• “Has the constitutional court ruled favorably in such cases?”.

Garcia included the chatbot's full responses in the decision, in what appears to be the first time a judge has admitted to doing so. The judge also included his own thoughts on legal precedents and said that AI was used to “expand the reasoning behind the decision.” After describing in detail the exchange of opinions with artificial intelligence, the judge used his answers and his own legal arguments as the basis for his decision.

Colombian law does not prohibit the use of AI in judicial decisions, but systems such as ChatGPT are known to which may give biased, discriminatory, or simply wrong answers. This is due to the fact that the language model has no real “understanding” text – it simply synthesizes sentences based on probability from millions of examples used to train the system.

The creators of ChatGPT, OpenAI, have implemented filters to eliminate some of the most problematic answers. But the developers warn that the tool still has significant limitations and should not be used for decision making.

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