To develop the algorithm, the team allowed an artificially intelligent computer to scan the published judgements from 584 cases relating to torture and degrading treatment, fair trials and privacy. They computer learned that certain phrases, facts, or circumstances occurred more frequently when there was a violation of the human rights act. After analysing hundreds of cases the computer was able to predict a verdict with 79 per cent accuracy. "Previous studies have predicted outcomes based on the nature of the crime, or the policy position of each judge, so this is the first time judgements have been predicted using analysis of text prepared by the court," said co-author, Dr Vasileios Lampos, UCL Computer Science. "We expect this sort of tool would improve efficiencies of high level, in demand courts, but to become a reality, we need to test it against more articles and the case data submitted to the court. "Ideally, we'd test and refine our algorithm using the applications made to the court rather than the published judgements, but without access to that data we rely on the court-published summaries of these submissions.

Recidivism prediction instruments (RPI's) provide decision makers with an assessment of the likelihood that a criminal defendant will reoffend at a future point in time. While such instruments are gaining increasing popularity across the country, their use is attracting tremendous controversy. Much of the controversy concerns potential discriminatory bias in the risk assessments that are produced. This paper discusses a fairness criterion originating in the field of educational and psychological testing that has recently been applied to assess the fairness of recidivism prediction instruments. We demonstrate how adherence to the criterion may lead to considerable disparate impact when recidivism prevalence differs across groups.

Artificial intelligence software that can find patterns in highly complex decisions is being used to predict our taste in films, TV shows and music with ever-increasing accuracy. And now, after a breakthrough study by a group of British scientists, it could be used to predict the outcome of trials. Software that is able to weigh up legal evidence and moral questions of right and wrong has been devised by computer scientists at University College London, and used to accurately predict the result in hundreds of real life cases. The AI "judge" has reached the same verdicts as judges at the European court of humanrights in almost four in five cases involving torture, degrading treatment and privacy. The algorithm examined English language data sets for 584 cases relating to torture and degrading treatment, fair trials and privacy.

Don't bring a drone with you to document your trip to Sweden -- you could find yourself in legal trouble. The country's Supreme Administrative Court has effectively banned camera drone flights through a ruling. Camera-equipped drones are surveillance cameras, the court argues, and that means they need a permit indicating that they'll be used to prevent crime or accidents. And since you probably aren't flying a drone to keep watch over your home, you're likely out of luck. It won't shock you to hear that local drone owners are upset.

JOINING "Hamilton", a Broadway show, and concerts by Adele, a British soul diva, on the list of tickets-to-kill-for in New York is a screening in an ugly new office building that recently popped-up in the East Village, a place best known for offbeat culture. There is a ten-week-long queue to see simulations by Watson, IBM's cognitive artificial-intelligence platform. Initially known for stunts such as beating human contestants on "Jeopardy!", a quiz show, Watson has been seeking a wider audience. It has found a vast potential one in the world of financial regulation. Rules have become so sprawling and mysterious that even regulators have begun asking for a map.

But unfettered access to all things smutty, dirty and questionably filthy has created a surge in censorship tools that, in theory, use algorithms and advanced artificial intelligence programs to identify porn and weed it out. Last year, Twitter acquired Madbits, a small AI startup that, according to a Wired report, created a program that accurately identifies NSFW content 99 percent of time and alerts users to its presence. Late last month, Yahoo open-sourced its own deep learning AI porn filter and there are no doubt similar projects underway at other internet companies. Big players have been sinking big money into cleaning up the internet for decades. The trouble is, censorship is a slippery slope, and obscenity is inherently subjective.

Well, in the context of lawyers, the young are leading the way with technology. A recent Reuters blog pegs the innovators' age range between generations Y (born mid-70s to early 2000s) and Z (the 90s – 2000s), within which lie the individuals that are transforming the future of legal services. And nothing looks to impact law more significantly in the coming decade than artificial intelligence (AI). The real-world benefit of its application is "continuing to explode," Reuters' Westlaw product management senior director Erik Lindberg said in the blog. Using it, attorneys stand to "make more informed decisions and have more confidence."

An Australian man was acquitted Thursday in the murder of a young woman who fell from his balcony two years ago after the two met through the popular dating app Tinder. What, exactly, caused 26-year-old Warriena Wright to plunge 14 stories is not known, but the encounter between the couple -- much of which was captured on an audio tape -- has prompted the question: Are mobile dating apps safe? The answer is complicated, according to dating experts and behavioral psychologists. "These incidents are very rare," said Sameera Sullivan, a relationship expert and psychologist who founded the matchmaking service, Lasting Connections, in 2012. "There's always going to be bad people out there," said Sullivan.

Often called cognitive computing or machine learning, AI is computers completing tasks traditionally performed by people. One way that AI has affected the legal space is its ability to process data to find patterns, perform tests, analyse and evaluate data to produce a set of results. The law's framework of rules makes it ideal for applying AI systems, where computers will process those rules, enabling them to complete tasks usually performed by lawyers. In simple terms, AI technology works by applying an amount of sample data and outcomes, previously examined by a professional, to a cognitive system, which is then able to analyse large amounts of data at high speed to produce a faster and more accurate result. The goal of AI isn't to change the nature of legal work or replace human lawyers, but to enable lawyers to concentrate on more cognitive tasks such as developing legal arguments, instead of spending long periods of time on routine duties like drafting and reviewing documents, extensive research of case files and other un-billable tasks.

"I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description ["hard-core pornography"], and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." In 1964, the Supreme Court overturned an obscenity conviction against Nico Jacobellis, a Cleveland theater manager accused of distributing obscene material. The film in question was Louis Malle's "The Lovers," starring Jeanne Moreau as a French housewife who, bored with her media-mogul husband and her polo-playing sidepiece, packs up and leaves after a hot night with a younger man. And by "hot," I mean a lot of artful blocking, heavy breathing and one fleeting nipple -- basically, nothing you can't see on cable TV.