At a time when organisations are increasingly replacing humans with artificial intelligence (AI), the Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud has warned that AI can be biased in its decision-making and can also be misused to bully people.
The CJI was speaking at the convocation ceremony of the 60th batch of students at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras.
He recalled incidents where AI tools ended up preferring men over women when used in the hiring process. He drew attention to the fact that “data-driven systems can perpetuate biases and marginalise the social control mechanisms that govern human behaviour.”
In his opinion, technology should be used to make humans resilient to the forces that pose a danger to their freedom and rights.
A few months ago, the Supreme Court had invited bids to establish an AI system that will transcribe court proceedings for other hearings as well as for the Constitution benches. In fact, AI was employed to transcribe proceedings in real time during the Constitution Bench hearing before a bench headed by the CJI. These were shared with the lawyers and also uploaded on the official website of the apex court. It is expected that the use of an AI system will ensure more accountability and transparency as the proceedings will be documented with a high level of precision and accuracy.
Till now, courts have been used to manual transcribing. Traditionally, stenographers note down whatever they are asked to note down, and not the entire proceedings.
