Senior Associate Justice Marvic M.V.F. Leonen warned that although digitalization and artificial intelligence (AI) offer advantages, they also pose risks.
He said one danger of digitalization is ransomware, which can compromise databases and cause further harm to victims involved in particular cases.
Digital-only access also poses a barrier, particularly for people who lack access to technology or the skills to use it.
Without proper change management and efforts to improve the digital skills of legal professionals and the poor, he cautioned that digitalization could deepen existing inequalities.
Another risk is dependence on technology vendors, which can undermine institutional and judicial sovereignty.
Leonen said that to address these threats, the Supreme Court (SC) has established cybersecurity rules and issued an administrative order directing judges and court personnel to observe what is known as cyber hygiene.
“Digitalization is necessary, but it is not neutral. The question is never whether we should modernize, the question is whether we can remain sovereign and fair over the tools that we adopt,” Leonen said.
Turning to AI, Leonen stressed the importance of understanding how the technology generates information.
He explained this by discussing three modes of logic: deduction, induction and abduction.
AI relies on induction, he said, drawing inferences from patterns found in large volumes of data, subject to statistical constraints.
“[Artificial intelligence] was made possible by three things. The first one is a huge amount of data. Almost all the techs in the planet that is digitized has been accessed by big tech. Second is technology. Technology in two ways. Cheaper memory and powerful processing, powerful processors, powerful ways to process that particular data. And then the last one is a huge amount of money that is funneled to the development of using the inference in order to gather conclusions. The inference being done is done statistically.”
Citing philosopher David Hume, Leonen warned against assuming that because one event follows another, the same outcome will occur every time under similar circumstances.
The limitation of AI, he said, becomes apparent when applied to legal cases.
“A past injustice is never authority. Artificial intelligence, when you deploy it, can infer that same injustice based upon an unjust decision. So you will keep on repeating something which may be already unjust.”
Leonen identified five characteristics that distinguish human intelligence from AI: embodiment, emotion, context, situation and culture.
He cited, as an example, the fact that more than 90 percent of people accused in criminal cases are poor.
Based on that data alone, and in the absence of those five characteristics, he noted that one might conclude or infer that poverty is the main factor driving criminal behavior.
However, Leonen said people with resources may be able to navigate or escape the criminal justice system at different stages, from police investigations and prosecution to court proceedings.
“Ang daming [way] out if you have the resources. Okay, but if you are poor, wala ka na,” he added.