Three judges under suspicion of ‘cheating’ with artificial intelligence
Portugal Resident
Appeal court judges suspected of using ChatGPT (or similar) to overturn pretrial ruling
“Strange expressions, careless Portuguese and citations of articles that don’t exist in the law”. These were the first signs that raised suspicions about an appeal court ruling.
Now, all three judges involved in the ruling are under suspicion of having drafted a judgement with the help of artificial intelligence.
It is not enough that cases in this country can drag on interminably, now we have the prospect of those that do go forwards being helped along by robots…
This particular case involves a process brought against former PSD MP Helena Lopes da Costa and Santa Casa da Misericórdia for suspicions of economic participation in business and abuse of power.
In February this year, pretrial judge Nuno Dias Costa decided the case had no legs (ie should not be taken to trial).
Then, in October, the three appeal court judges – Alfredo Costa, Hermengarda do Valle-Frias and Margarida Ramos de Almeida – ruled that it should, in a document that very quickly raised professional hackles.
As Correio da Manhã reports, all three signed off on “strange expressions, careless Portuguese and quotes from articles that do not exist in the law”.
It might be feasible that one judge should have a ‘lapsus calami’, but all three?
And there were other ‘oddities’, explains the paper. In the part of the text reserved for the analysis of the specific case, for example, “the judges do not once detail the conduct of the defendants, limiting themselves to general considerations about the crimes in question”.
The whole thing has been enough for the lawyers of Helena Lopes da Costa to file for an annulment – saying they have never seen a “text presented as a judgement citing articles that do not exist, nor have they ever existed”.
Both lawyers told CM that “to the average observer, the document bears various resemblances to a text generated by artificial intelligence or some other tool of a computer or digital nature”, such as ChatGPT.
The lawyers were also surprised by the use of expressions such as “penal doctrine”, “Portuguese Penal Code”, “jurisprudence of the Supreme Court of Justice” – none of which are common in the texts of (more habitual) court decisions.
As for CM’s attempts to get sight of the suspect ruling, their journalists say they have been informed by the lead judge Alfredo Costa that it is ‘confidential’.
But if all this sounds ‘just too bizarre’, it needs to be said that discussion on the use of AI in the courtroom is by no means new. China was already open to the idea of using it back in 2018, and since then numerous articles have waxed enthusiastically over the potential virtues of such a practice: “One big idea is whether AI could one day take over some of the duties of judges or even replace them entirely. This possibility raises some interesting questions about the role of judges, the fairness of computer decisions, and how we should think about justice in a tech-driven world”, says one, available on LinkedIn.
Perhaps Portugal’s triumvirate, on the bench in Lisbon, see themselves more as trailblazers, and not as Correio da Manhã describes them, ‘suspects of cheating’.
natasha.donn@portugalresident.com
The post Three judges under suspicion of ‘cheating’ with artificial intelligence appeared first on Portugal Resident written by Natasha Donn
