The application of artificial intelligence algorithms in the justice system - for example to decide which offenders are eligible for alternatives to custodial sentences - will be among the first items on the agenda of a year-long investigation into the impact of technology opened by the Law Society. The Public Policy Technology and Law Commission - Algorithms in the Justice System, will meet in public three times, its chair Christina Blacklaws, who next month assumes the presidency of the Law Society, announced last night. The commmission's formation reflects growing concern about the advent of so-called'Schrodinger's justice' - in which decisions are taken by self-learning systems impervious to examination or challenge. Pressure group Big Brother Watch revealed yesterday that it has instructed human rights firm Leigh Day to take action against the Metropolitan Police over to demand the withdrawal of'dangerously authoritarian' automated technology for recognising faces at public events such as the Notting Hill Carnival. Blacklaws told an event at Chancery Lane last night that facial recognition systems in effect require'a degree of privacy to be surrendered in return for a promise of greater security' - but that the technology had so far failed to work.