Author | Wang Ying
Editor | Egg Manager
As the saying goes, it is difficult for an honest official to break housework. In recent years, with the gradual improvement of China's laws and regulations, people's lives are more orderly and harmonious, and the judicial field has also made great progress, especially the application of AI technology.
Objectively speaking, law, as a highly professional industry, is similar to the medical industry. Even if the auxiliary equipment is advanced, it needs the guidance of doctors. In other words, no matter how advanced the technology is, it is also inseparable from the role of people. This is more obvious in the legal field, because the trial of a case involves not only legal provisions, but also customs and people's feelings, and the world is warm and cold.
However, it is now the general trend for AI to enter the judicial field.
"The judicial field is actually very suitable for the use of AI. There is a lot of paperwork in the trial of a case, and a lot of evidence documents need to be handed in. AI can play a great role in this respect, and quickly complete the work of case recording and evidence sorting. This is of great help to improve the trial efficiency of the case. " Li Yingjie, an artificial intelligence development engineer, told Tanker.
However, legal technology has never been a popular track for AI applications. It seems that we rarely hear about major R&D achievements and investment and financing events of "AI+ Justice". This is an inevitable objective law for a field with high industry barriers and great technical difficulties.
Driven by new creation (information technology application innovation industry) and legal technology, the priority of "AI+ justice" in the whole intelligent industry is rising. At the beginning of April this year, the domestic artificial intelligence enterprise "Power Law Intelligence", which focuses on the legal field, announced the completion of the A round of financing of nearly 60 million yuan.
"the application of AI technology in the legal industry will be deeper and deeper, and it will bring huge industry changes in the long run. We expect the team to continuously improve products, expand more application scenarios and bring more empowerment and promotion to the industry. " Huang Yungang, the source capital that led the investment in this round of power-law intelligence financing, said.
As early as the 1990s, the application of artificial intelligence combined with law appeared. At that time, a system called "running away" was born, and its main purpose was to deal with the division of divorce property. However, at that time, the slippery rise showed more experimental significance and was not specifically implemented in legal practice.
In fact, in the past few years, the development momentum of the global legal science and technology field is good. On June 5, 2009, Forbes published an article saying that in 2065438+2008, the global financing in the field of legal science and technology reached166.3 billion US dollars, an explosive increase of 7 13% compared with 2065438+2007.
Although the global market is hot, the domestic legal science and technology field has been in a tepid state. Even now, Huayu Software is still the only listed company active in the field of legal science and technology in China. However, as can be seen from Huayu Software's financial report in the third quarter of 2020, orders in the field of legal science and technology are picking up rapidly, with a year-on-year increase of 59%.
"My cases in recent years have basically been realized online, such as online filing, payment, submission of evidence materials, exchange of evidence, debate in court, cross-examination, receipt of litigation documents with electronic signatures, mediation agreements, online delivery, online marking and volume adjustment." Lawyer Guo of Beijing Dongyuan Law Firm told Tanker.
With the rapid development of AI technology, the judicial field has gradually begun to conform to the trend, and applications such as AI investigation and AI judge have emerged. However, the earliest legal technology involved in China should be "legal e-commerce"-since the rise of 20 10 e-commerce industry, there have been many businesses that provide legal advice and contract drafting services for enterprises.
However, due to the particularity of legal services, legal e-commerce has gradually declined. In recent years, with the increasing proportion of science and technology investment in government behavior, To G's AI company is expected to usher in the sustained high growth of orders. At the same time of explosive growth in the field of innovation, legal technology is increasingly worth looking forward to. AI is constantly expanding the new dimension of legal service mode.
According to Tanker, at present, there are many innovative practices of AI in judicial practice, mainly including algorithm models for analyzing cases, smart cameras all over the city and smart judges for court trials. With the deepening of the construction of smart courts, smart litigation service has become the main way of litigation service in people's courts, which also allows people to fully enjoy the "digital dividend" brought by informationization.
Lawyer Li Shengcheng from Shi Jing Law Firm told the reporter of Oil Tanker: "I am very optimistic about the application of artificial intelligence in the judicial field. From the Supreme Court to private law firms, I am also pursuing the intelligence of legal application, especially in the application of big data. However, to complete the substitution, there is neither legal basis nor great moral hazard. "
However, although AI is widely used in the judicial field, there has never been an "explosion". Although the market potential is huge, players have not found a business model that can be quickly realized.
In March 2020, Atrium, a well-known legal software and law firm startup that has raised more than 400 million RMB, announced its closure, which poured cold water on this undeveloped new field. This also forces legal science and technology practitioners and employers to re-examine whether "AI+ Justice" is a bubble or a slogan.
When AI technology continues to penetrate into all walks of life, it means that in the field of legal technology, not only relevant legal service companies are exploring this new market, but even technology giants are trying to share a piece of it.
Among them, the most fascinating thing is that Alibaba used AI technology to complete 600 contract reviews, and it only took 1 second to kill 8 professional lawyers.
On 20 19, Ali Dharma Institute launched the research result of "AI Judge", which was published in SIGIR official website, the top academic conference in the field of information retrieval. Not only that, on 20 18, Alibaba also established * * * technology in Hangzhou to provide SaaS services for the courts.
Unlike Alibaba's fancy technology research and development, Tencent has been focusing on using artificial intelligence for contract review and electronic signing. On 20 17, Tencent reached a strategic cooperation with Fast Legal Affairs to provide customers with "legal e-commerce" services; 2065438+In March 2009, Tencent and Tiger Fund jointly led the bid for Dafa, an electronic contract service platform.
JD.COM released the legal robot "Fadongdong" based on its self-developed speech recognition technology from 2065438 to September 2008.
According to Tanker, Fadong can use AI algorithm to intelligently analyze legal questions and give accurate answers, and at the same time, it can actively push legal knowledge related to the questions to users. In addition, it can update the knowledge base through continuous independent learning and provide better services for users.
Judging from the initiatives and related applications of the above-mentioned technology giants, "AI+ Justice" seems to be the general trend. At present, the application of AI in the judicial field also includes smart trial, smart audit, judicial big data, etc., and it is indeed improving work efficiency for the judicial field.
2065438+July 2008, the first AIDS case in Zhejiang was solved. The suspect of illegal "electric fish" who has not been arrested for six years was discovered by the brain of Alibaba Cloud ET City, helping the police to successfully arrest the suspect. The case involving more than 600,000 yuan was finally solved. Not only that, in 20 19, Shenzhen Nanshan police also successfully detected an online dating fraud case through AI algorithm.
In addition to his role in case detection, Ai also entered the court.
After AI entered the judicial field, the traditional offline courts filed cases and trials all turned online.
In the filing stage, online filing and payment are not only convenient and fast, but also save the time waiting at the court window; In the trial stage, a notebook and a mobile phone can be tried anytime and anywhere.
It is not difficult to see that for enterprises and individuals, the online trial process is more convenient and faster, and it can also save litigation costs.
"I was very resistant to the AI ? ? trial at first, because many office software were not skilled or even used, wasting a lot of time sorting out evidence materials and digitizing evidence." Lawyer Guo told the reporter of Tanker that when she first came into contact with AI trial, she was actually very exclusive, but now she has accepted the development trend of this industry.
AI trial has undoubtedly played a positive role in improving the efficiency of case trial and reducing the number of procedures. However, judging from the reality, the intelligent upgrade in the judicial field still faces some unresolved basic problems, including the low level of intelligence and the lack of access to data and information in various places. Among them, the question worthy of people's thinking is how to balance emotion and law in the application of AI technology.
The Blue Book of Court Informatization points out that artificial intelligence is profoundly affecting the field of judicial trial, and the trial mode of "man-machine cooperation" may become the norm.
"The trial mode of man-machine cooperation may become a normal state. However, artificial intelligence still plays an auxiliary role in the trial process. Especially for some cases with complicated legal relations, artificial intelligence can quickly record, retrieve and sort out. However, how to judge and sort out the focus of the case still requires the judge to complete it independently to ensure the fairness and justice of the case judgment process and judgment results to the maximum extent. " Lawyer Guo told the tanker.
At the beginning of 2020, during the COVID-19 epidemic, a large number of online litigation services ensured the health and safety of litigants and court staff, and at the same time promoted the restoration of social order. Since the establishment of the Internet Courts in Beijing, Hangzhou and Guangzhou on 20 17, the application of AI in the judicial field has made many outstanding achievements.
"Objectively speaking, the application of AI will be more and more abundant in the future judicial practice, but from the current technology, it is not advisable to rely entirely on AI for trial, because many cases involve ethics and emotions. Although the machine is objective, it is difficult to analyze specific events. " Li Yingjie said frankly to the "tanker".
In the future, all cases may be tried by AI through the Internet, but at present, cases with clear facts and simple legal relationship are more suitable.
"If AI judge is technically feasible, it may be a feasible direction as a way for both parties in civil cases to pre-examine (not have) the final legal effect." Lawyer Li Shengcheng told Tanker.
"For example, if you do an AI pre-trial, it is equivalent to going to the hospital to see a doctor, first do a CT, ECG or EEG. These examination reports will also make a general diagnosis, but they will also be noted-subject to the diagnosis of clinicians. This is only the diagnosis result of the machine and has certain reference significance. " Lawyer Li Shengcheng further explained.
The application of artificial intelligence in the judicial field is still in its infancy. In the future, with the development of technology, AI algorithm will continue to improve, and AI can do more and more work. Therefore, we need to build a perfect review system to review and hear cases with different trial results.
What "AI+ Justice" may eventually do is to separate emotional value from legal value, hand over emotional problems to people and hand over legal problems to robots.
* The title of this article comes from: Picture Network, based on VRF protocol.