Artificial Intelligence in Criminal Proceedings

Abstract

The capacity and potential of artificial intelligence (AI) to replace human beings, to one degree or another constitute a pressing scholarly issue. The positive and negative consequences of this future and seemingly inevitable development require serious theoretical and empirical examination. In the field of criminal proceedings, which is characterized by a substantial volume of data requiring consideration, the use of digital technologies and AI has been shown to be necessary and to offer potential benefits, including a significant reduction in labor costs, the simplification of procedures, the acceleration of processes, and the shortening of procedural time limits. The indisputable advantages of AI include its freedom from incompetence, bias, opportunism, and corruption. At the same time, the introduction of AI into criminal procedure entails certain risks, since, at the present stage of its development, AI lacks a number of key characteristics inherent only in the human mind. The author concludes that it is necessary to develop software capable of resolving hypothetical criminal cases in an experimental testing mode and of generating the knowledge needed to assess both the possibilities of using AI in criminal proceedings and the potential risks of its application in an actual criminal case.