Artificial intelligence pilot for courts passes state Senate committee

The state Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously passed a bill Tuesday allowing UC Berkeley and UC Irvine law schools to create an artificial intelligence pilot program in conjunction with the superior courts of Alameda and Orange Counties to expedite certain procedures.

While approving movement of SB 444 to the Appropriations Committee, some senators raised concerns about possible misuse of the technology.

The bill's sponsor, Sen. Tom Umberg, D-Long Beach, said during the committee hearing artificial intelligence would help with court business, such as filing protective orders for people affected by domestic violence. Forms requesting such court orders are often rife with errors that result in a petition getting kicked back and a delay for everybody involved, Umberg claimed. Implementing AI into such a process would make things easier and limit work for court staff, he said.

The partnership "in particular" with the Orange County Superior Court would "assist with those who can't afford counsel."

"AI could identify individuals who should have their records expunged," Umberg concluded, prefacing the comments of Presiding Judge Kirk Nakamura of the Orange County Superior Court.

Nakamura said AI could help expedite retroactive expungement on hard-to-track matters, such as accomplice to felony murder exceptions where the technology could help a judge decide whether a person was eligible for a reduced sentence or commutation.

"AI is currently being used in our court," Nakamura said, mentioning an ongoing partnership with Google and Microsoft, which he said enabled simple improvements like location services and apps jurors can use to make sure they arrive on time.

Committee Chair Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara, told those in attendance, "AI and all these technologies offer very exciting opportunities, but if you recall from any science fiction films that you've seen, the mind and its capacity to take what might otherwise be used for good and transpose that into not so good or even evil also exists."

Jackson warned of entering a "Brave New World," in apparent reference to Aldous Huxley's 1931 novel depicting a world government built on advanced technology which eschewed individual agency for a perceived collective good.

Despite these reservations, Jackson said the proposed SB 444 would likely help low-income and indigent litigants and mentioned it would likely be expanded in the future.

"AI has to be approached very methodically and thoughtfully," Jackson concluded. "We are not China. We don't want this information being used in ways that might deny democracy and the ability of people to exercise their freedoms."

Some of these denials might manifest as implicit bias that might be baked into an AI system, if such a flaw were combined with the already substantial power of the courts, efforts to improve litigants access could be pursued "at the expense of further marginalizing them," Jackson said.

Sen. Andreas Borgeas, R-Fresno, bemoaned the lack of a proposed program in his district, generally commenting he believed implementing AI would be a positive step for the courts.

But he added, "I hope this does not go in the direction of predictive decision making by the judge ... past sentencing patterns, propensity for recidivism, all that can bear into a judge's decision making process."