Artificial Intelligence must be used judiciously: SC judge Justice Surya Kant

Indian judiciary is far ahead of the other commonwealth countries in terms of integrating technology, said justice Surya Kant of the Supreme Court even as the second senior-most judge of the top court advised that dependence on human intelligence cannot be done away with as artificial intelligence needs to be judiciously used.

Justice Kant made the comment while hearing an urgent mentioning of a case for early listing where the lawyer spoke about use of AI technology in facilitating court functions. Justice Kant had attended the Conference of judges of Commonwealth Nations earlier this month.

Justice Kant said, “I was in a meeting with Chief Justices of Commonwealth countries...We are far ahead of them in terms of technology. There is no hype in the judiciary there to have artificial intelligence (AI). They are well behind us.”

Stating his personal view, justice Kant, who is in line to become Chief Justice of India (CJI) in November this year after justice Bhushan R Gavai demits office, said that personally he does not favour an overdependence on technology. “Having human minds to perform tasks creates a good balancing. No doubt AI is useful. It must be used judiciously.”

The court was responding to a comment made by senior advocate Menaka Guruswamy who had read about what justice Kant commented on AI last week. While hearing a petition on the Krishna river water dispute on April 24, justice Kant had cited his reservations about AI in legal processes terming it a “man-made machine” with “serious biases”.

He was responding to a comment by a senior lawyer Jaideep Gupta arguing the case who said that with AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini, gathering details of tributaries of river Krishna becomes simple. Justice Kant replied, “At least I am afraid of doing that. It is human nature that when we start depending on something, we are bound to get used to it.”

Gupta said that if we forget our ability to research the source of information, it becomes difficult to authenticate the information sourced by AI tools, which have been criticised for having its own biases. Justice Kant said “Absolutely, very serious biases...We must remind ourselves; this is also a man-made machine.”

On an earlier occasion last week, while hearing a petition seeking implementation of Government’s policy on electric vehicles, the topic of AI came up for discussion. The arguing counsel Prashant Bhushan said that during a recent visit to the U.S, his son booked a taxi and a driverless car came to pick him up.

The bench headed by justice Kant raised apprehensions on AI wiping out jobs, particularly in the auto sector as the number of drivers who will be affected by such a change is huge.

“AI should not eliminate the employment of drivers. In India, being a driver is a major source of livelihood,” justice Kant said, as he admitted that AI is developing very fast with a module becoming obsolete within a month.

The observations made by the Supreme Court judge come at a time when the Supreme Court has successfully rolled out AI in translation of judgments from English to regional languages. Last year, the top court inaugurated the National Judicial Museum and Archives within the Supreme Court precincts, where a major attraction was a virtual lawyer enabled by AI who responds to any query shared by visitors.

To explore the use of AI in judicial domain, the Supreme Court has constituted Artificial Intelligence Committee. Under the supervision of this committee, an Artificial Intelligence Tool, SUVAS (Supreme Court Vidhik Anuvaad Software) for translating judgments into vernacular languages and vice versa has been developed.

In Another tool developed by the committee is AI-based legal research tool, SUPACE (Supreme Court Portal for Assistance in Court Efficiency). In addition, the committee has employed AI in keeping a track of cases pending in Supreme Court, with special focus on old cases, cases pertaining to senior citizen, women and marginalised section. As this is a developing field, new avenues are being explored to utilise AI technology.