China Develops AI ‘Prosecutor’ that Can Press Charges Accurately

It is a well-known fact that China has been making numerous advancements in the field of technology. There are different products and areas where China is making a great deal of progress. More recently, Chinese scientists made an advancement in the field of artificial intelligence, as they disclosed that they have developed a machine capable of charging people with crime via the use of artificial intelligence. Obviously, this is the first machine of its kind to be introduced in the world and no such machine has existed before. According to the claims of the researchers, the AI ‘prosecutor’ is capable of charging people with 97% accuracy.

They also revealed that the machine is capable of working on a verbal description. The Shanghai Pudong People’s Procuratorate, which is the busiest and largest district prosecution office, developed and tested the unique machine. The lead scientist of the project informed local media that they had decided to develop the machine for cutting down the existing workload of the prosecutors. The project’s lead scientist, Professor Shi Yong said that they would be able to use the system in the decision-making process, which means prosecutors would be replaced to a certain extent. As a matter of fact, researchers went as far as claiming that the machine was capable of identifying ‘dissent’, if any, against the state.

The scientists went on to explain how the computer program would work. They said that the machine would use 1,000 case description texts generated by humans for pressing charges. It is also important to note that the machine has been under training for five years. It started its training in 2015 and continued till 2020. A total of 17,000 cases were fed to the machine and it was able to identify as well as press charges in the case of some common crimes. 

During the training process, a number of cases were assigned to the AI machine, and these included gambling crimes, credit card frauds, theft and obstruction of official duties, and dangerous driving. Now, the researchers are hoping that their machine would soon be put to use and would replace prosecutors to a certain extent in the decision-making process. Once the machine is given additional training, it would be able to recognize even more different kinds of cases and then be able to press charges accordingly. However, the new machine has given rise to some concerns amongst the existing prosecutors.

Some of the prosecutors wanted to know that who would be held responsible in the event the machine ended up making a mistake. Likewise, others also spoke to Chinese media and said that humans don’t want computers to interfere in their work. Law enforcement agencies all over the globe are taking advantage of digital technology, but their use is only limited to forensics or the evaluation of evidence. This would be the first time for artificial intelligence to be used in the decision-making process, due to which it is understood that people would have a lot of questions about its suitability and effectiveness.