An artificial intelligence tool designed to speed up the discharge of patients is being trialled at a hospital trust in London. The platform completes documents needed to send fit patients home, potentially saving hours of delays and freeing up beds. Wes Streeting, the health secretary, said the tech will enable doctors to spend less time on paperwork and more time focused on care, cutting waiting times in the process. The platform, which is being piloted at Chelsea and Westminster NHS trust, extracts information from medical records, including diagnoses and test results. This helps medics to draft discharge summaries, which have to be completed before a person is sent home from hospital.

Justice systems around the world are using artificial intelligence (AI) to assess people with criminal convictions. These AI technologies rely on machine learning algorithms and their key purpose is to predict the risk of reoffending. They influence decisions made by the courts and prisons and by parole and probation officers. This kind of tech has been an intrinsic part of the UK justice system since 2001. That was the year a risk assessment tool, known as Oasys (Offender Assessment System), was introduced and began taking over certain tasks from probation officers. Yet in over two decades, scientists outside the government have not been permitted access to the data behind Oasys to independently analyse its workings and assess its accuracy – for example, whether the decisions it influences lead to fewer offences or reconvictions. Lack of transparency affects AI systems generally. Their complex decision-making processes can evolve into a black box – too obscure to unravel without advanced technical knowledge. Proponents believe that AI algorithms are more objective scientific tools because they are standardised and this helps to reduce human bias in assessments and decision making. This, supporters claim, makes them useful for public protection. But critics say that a lack of access to the data, as well as other crucial information required for independent evaluation, raises serious questions of accountability and transparency.

Note: This is part one of a two-part series on IBM Watson Care Manager for specialty courts. Our goal at the Juvenile Court of Montgomery County, Ohio, is to keep kids alive until they're old enough to make decisions on their own. We feel as if almost every child is directly or indirectly at risk today because of drugs, abuse and other issues. When we can't rely on the family to take care of them, it's our role to become like a surrogate parent. We give them a chance to survive until they're an adult and able to make it on their own.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is on the verge of naming a new chief probation officer, and we're holding our breath. Too many of the people who have filled the position over the last two decades lacked a coherent vision for the department, failed to give the job their full attention, never intended to stay, wouldn't or couldn't curb bad behavior by their deputies, didn't work well with the Board of Supervisors, or some combination of the above. Hope springs eternal, and it could be different this time. As the supervisors conducted interviews earlier this month, the names of finalists were reported by the website WitnessLA, and they include candidates with varied and impressive credentials. The chief probation officer may be the most important department leader appointed by the supervisors, and this hiring decision may therefore be the board's most consequential. Whoever fills the post will take charge of programs that will determine whether juveniles who have had brushes with the law will get the guidance and support they need to straighten out or will instead careen down a destructive path of crime and failure.