Artifically intelligent 'judge' developed which can predict court verdicts with 79 per cent accuracy

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.