WASHINGTON — Chief Justice John Roberts turned his attention Sunday to the promise and shortcomings of artificial intelligence in the federal courts, in an annual report that made no mention of Supreme Court ethics or legal controversies involving Donald Trump.
Roberts described artificial intelligence as the “new frontier of technology” and discussed the pros and cons of computer-generated content in the legal profession. His comments come just a few days after the latest example of AI-generated fake legal citations made their way into official documents. court documents, in a case involving former Trump attorney Michael Cohen.
“Always a bad idea,” Roberts wrote in his final report, noting that “any use of AI requires caution and humility.”
At the same time, however, the Chief Justice acknowledged that AI can make it much easier for people without much money to access justice. “These tools have the welcome potential to smooth out any disconnect between available resources and the pressing needs in our justice system,” Roberts wrote.
The report came at the end of a year in which a series of stories questioned the judges' ethical practices and the court responded to critics by adopting its first code of conduct. Many of those stories focused on Judge Clarence Thomas and his failure to disclose travel, other hospitality and additional financial ties to wealthy conservative donors, including Harlan Crow and the Koch brothers. But Justices Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor have also come under scrutiny.
The country is also entering an election year that will likely entangle the courts one way or another in the ongoing criminal cases against Trump and efforts to keep the Republican former president off the 2024 ballot.
Along with his eight colleagues, Roberts almost never discusses cases that are before the Supreme Court or likely to go there. In previous reports, he has advocated for greater security and salary increases for federal judges, praised judges and their assistants for handling the coronavirus pandemic and highlighted other aspects of technological changes in the courts.
Roberts once compared judges to umpires who call balls and strokes but do not set the rules. In his latest report, he turned to another sport, tennis, to make the point that technology will not replace judges anytime soon.
In many tennis tournaments, optical technology, instead of human line judges, now determines “whether 80-mile-per-hour serves are inside or outside. These decisions involve precision down to the millimeter. And there is no discretion; the ball is either not affected In contrast, legal provisions often involve gray areas that still require the application of human judgment,” Roberts wrote.
While cautiously looking ahead to the increasing use of artificial intelligence in the courts, Roberts wrote: “I predict that there will be human judges for a while. But I predict with equal confidence that judicial work – especially at the trial level – will be significantly influenced by AI.”