But who controls the computer? It can’t be the government, because the government will sometimes be a litigant before the computer. It can’t be a software company, because that company may have its own agenda (and could itself be called to litigate before the computer - although maybe Judge Claude could let Judge Grok take over if Anthropic gets sued). And it can’t be nobody - does it own all its own hardware? If that hardware breaks down, who fixes it? In this paper, the researchers are trying to be as objective as possible in the search for truth. Who do you trust to do that when handed real power?

To be clear, federal judges do have their paychecks signed by the federal government, but they are lifetime appointees and their pay can never be withheld or reduced. You would need to design an equivalent system of independence.

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wvenable 7 hours ago | parent [-]

It not the paychecks that influence federal judges; these days it's more of quid-pro-quo for getting the position in the first place. Theoretically they are under no obligation but the bias is built in.

The problem with a AI is similar; what in-built biases does it have? Even if it was simply trained on the entire legal history that would bias it towards historical norms.

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arctic-true 7 hours ago | parent [-]

I think it is usually the opposite - presidents nominate judges they think will agree with them. There’s really nothing a president can do once the judge is sworn in, and we have seen some federal judges take pretty drastic swings in their judicial philosophy over the course of their careers. There’s no reason for the judge to hold up their end of the quid-pro-quo. To the extent they do so, it’s because they were inclined to do so in the first place.

	▲	wvenable 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You just repeated what I said -- how is that the opposite?