China creates 'AI prosecutor' to identify crimes with 97% accuracy: Report

In a futuristic technological breakthrough, researchers in China have created an Artificial Intelligence (AI) that can identify crimes with an accuracy of more than 97% and then file charges against criminals. The AI technology, which runs on a standard desktop PC, was developed by China’s largest district public prosecution office named Shanghai Pudong People’s Procuratorate, Chinese news agency South China Morning Post reports. “The system can replace prosecutors in the decision-making process to a certain extent,” researcher Shi Yong said in a paper published in Management Review obtained by the SCMP. Director of the Big Data and Knowledge Management Institute at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Professor Shi Yong, principal investigator of the AI prosecutor's development project reportedly said: "This technology reduces the workload of prosecutors and focuses on more difficult tasks." 

An AI-driven machine was manufactured from the already existing AI tool known as System 206. Chinese prosecutors were using technology to assess evidence and documents and determine whether or not a suspected criminal was dangerous to the public and were accordingly deciding the verdicts. This task will now be undertaken by the ‘AI prosecutor’ that will work on cases ranging from credit card fraud, dangerous driving, theft, and fraud, as well as "picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” It will then analyze the human-made case descriptions at lengths to accordingly press the criminal charges on the suspects or the accused. 

AI 'cannot replace humans in decision making': Critics 

According to the newspaper SCMP, China’s AI prosecutor was trained from a database of at least 17,000 criminal and other cases in Shanghai dating between 2015 to 2020. The technology will soon become capable of charging less common crimes, as well as acquire the expertise of charging a single suspect with more than one crime at the same time, researchers told SCMP. 

"The accuracy of 97% may be high from a technological point of view, but there will always be a chance of a mistake," meanwhile another unnamed Chinese prosecutor told the paper, stressing that the technology always comes with a loophole.

"Who will take responsibility when it [an error] happens? The prosecutor, the machine, or the designer of the algorithm?” he asked. "AI may help detect a mistake, but it cannot replace humans in making a decision," the prosecutor further asserted. Several Chinese prosecutors have already been using the so-called 206 system and machine learning to study evidence and transcribe court testimony, sources told the Chinese paper. China also employs AI to monitor and surveil the government employees' activities in order to detect scandals and state-based corruption. 

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