AI predicts outcomes of human rights trials

A team of computer and legal scientists from the UK worked alongside Daniel Preoțiuc-Pietro – a postdoctoral researcher in natural language processing and machine learning from the University of Pennsylvania – to extract case information published by the ECtHR. They identified English language data sets for 584 cases relating to Articles 3, 6 and 8 of the Convention. Article 3 forbids torture and inhuman and degrading treatment (250 cases); Article 6 protects the right to a fair trial (80 cases) and Article 8 provides a right to respect for one's "private and family life, his home and his correspondence" (254 cases). They then applied an AI algorithm to find patterns in the text. To prevent bias and mislearning, they selected an equal number of violation and non-violation cases.