There is an idea out there that we should allow automatic systems for traffic control. The radar camera image should be automatically processed by automatic number plate recognition software, a misdemeanour fee should be calculated automatically based on speed, ticket should be created and sent to the offender automatically, without human interaction. Welcome to the future. Autonomous systems taking over.
Efficient? Maybe. But do we really want it? Take away the human nature of punishment and human offenders are reduced to slaves to the technology. Not just offenders – but rather all of us. Technology is rarely wrong. Almost never. Actually, never. If the system says you were going over the speed limit, you were going over the speed limit. Is appeal even worth it? Should appeal even be allowed? The human decision-making process when deciding on punishment of traffic rules offenders is rarely so streamlined as its computerised counterpart. Doesn’t this driver look kind of like my mom? Oh, he got kids with him… There is a truck right beside him… There are a million things we consider when deciding on punishment. And not all of them are rational – there are a lot of emotions in the process as well. Simple AI we have got nowadays cannot handle that yet. Will it ever? Will it want to? Do we want it to?
I think the punitive law should remain a domain of human. Decisions should be result of emotions, of legal reasoning based on a thousand years of human legal philosophy, with all its flaws and weaknesses. A philosophy that started out in Mesopotamia, ancient Greece, Rome and Constantinople. Philosophy that survived through the Dark Ages and made Enlightment what it was. It is a philosophy, that makes it imperfect. We know that we do not know.
Human decision making is full of mistakes. And is a subject to appeal. Mistakes are what makes our legal system and our legal thought to evolve, and this evolution makes it ever more humane.
What are computers good at? Optimisation. They are good at figuring out rules based on input data. Finding shortcuts from where we are to where the programmer thought we should end up – or – wherever the input data extrapolation will take us. Need to find a new cure for cancer or which gene is responsible for the colour of hair? AI is perfect. Automatic driving? Maybe.
When left to the mercy of humans and machines we know there will be none with the latter. And mercy is exactly what we need in our punitive law. No mistakes, no appeal and no mercy make the system cruel, cold and unforgiving. Like a slave owner.
