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arctic-truetoday at 12:56 AM1 replyview on HN

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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wvenabletoday at 1:10 AM

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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