By Julian Adler,  Jethro Antoine, Laith Al-Saadoon

There was but one passing reference to “core values” over the course of a recent U.S. Senate Judiciary hearing on artificial intelligence [AI] in criminal investigations and prosecutions.[1] This is typical. Even in spaces like the criminal legal system, where the specters of racial injustice and inhumanity loom so large, the technological sublimity of AI can be awfully distracting. People have long looked to technology to duck the hard problem of values. “[W]e have tended to believe that if we just had more information, we could make better policy,” observes University of Nevada’s Lynda Walsh in Scientists as Prophets. “But no matter how much data we could lay hands to—even if it were LaPlace’s Demon itself—values would still stand in the way.”[2] If anything is clear about advanced AI, it is that there is much we don’t know and even more that we can’t begin to predict. Consider that the “generative AI” we have witnessed over the past 18 months—AI which produces autonomous human-impersonating content—was largely unforeseen. It’s now being attributed to AI’s “emergent abilities.”

Nwq York: Center for Justice Innovation, 2024. 8p.