Judges In Colombia Use ChatGPT To Make Court Decisions, The Result?

Judges in Colombia use AI. (Image Credit: dock. Unsplash)

JAKARTA - A judge in Colombia, South America, has surprisingly used the ChatGPT to make court decisions, this is the first time a legal decision has been made with the help of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) text generator.

Judge Juan Manuel Padilla Garcia, who presided over the First Circuit Court in the city of Cartagena, Colombia, used AI tools to raise legal questions and included his response in his decision.

According to court documents issued January 30, 2023, the case involved a dispute with the health insurance company about whether an autistic child should receive coverage for medical treatment.

Garcia concluded that the overall cost of treatment and transportation costs of children must be paid in insurance because their parents cannot afford it.

In the court document, Garcia posed a question to chatbot, such as "Are minors (must) be exempt from paying their therapeutic costs?," and Does the judiciary of the constitutional court make a favorable decision in a similar case?," said Garcia.

ChatGPT's response is in accordance with the judge's final decision, Yes, this is true. According to regulations in Colombia, minors diagnosed with autism are exempt from paying their therapeutic costs," replied ChatGPT.

Although it did not cause much commotion itself, the inclusion of Garcia's conversation with ChatGPT in the verdict was quite controversial.

But through a statement, Garcia reasoned that using a ChatGPT, he could save time spent compiling the assessment after corroborating the information provided by AI.

"Argumen untuk keputusan ini akan ditentukan sejalan dengan penggunaan AI. Oleh karena itu, kami memasukkan beberapa pertanyaan hukum yang diajukan dalam proses ini," jelas Garcia.

"The purpose of entering this AI-produced text does not at all replace the judge's decision. What we are really looking for is optimizing the time spent compiling the assessment after strengthening the information provided by AI," he added.

Launching The Guardian, Saturday, February 4, Garcia defended the use of his technology, stating it could make Colombia's swollen legal system more efficient. He also uses the precedent of the previous ruling to support his decision.

To Blu Radio, Garcia revealed that ChatGPT and other similar programs could be useful for facilitating text preparation but not with the aim of replacing judges.

"By asking questions to the app, we don't stop being judges, being thinkers," said Garcia.

The case has sparked discussions about the use of AI in law and has been criticized by some of Garcia's colleagues.

Please note, ChatGPT explores text on the Internet to generate informed responses but has proven to provide a different answer to the same question.

Colombia's law does not prohibit the use of AI in court decisions, but systems like ChatGPT sometimes make up information to create inventive and interesting lies.

This is because the language model does not have an understanding of the actual text, it only synthesizes sentences based on the probability of millions of examples used to train the system.

ChatGPT maker OpenAI has implemented filters to remove some of the more problematic responses. But developers warn the tool still has significant limitations and should not be used for consequent decision making.

The newly born and shocking platform of cyberspace has raised concerns in recent weeks, including in the world of education, where teachers fear ChatGPT could be used by students for plagiarism.