Historic day, a feather in the cap of CJI Bobde: Justice NV Ramana on launch of Artificial Intelligence tool, SUPAC [LIVE UPDATES]

The Artificial Intelligence Committee, Supreme Court of India is launching the Artificial Intelligence portal SUPACE (Supreme Court Portal for Assistance in Courts Efficiency) through Video Conferencing.

. Live updates of the event feature here:

. Justice Rao: He (CJI) has great hopes and aspirations for artificial intelligence being helpful in the administration of justice.

. Justice Rao: Hon'ble Chief Justice of India, he was the first chairman of the Artificial Intelligence Committee whom I have succeeded.

. Justice Rao: The recent advances in technology has been revolutionising every facet of human life. Technology has increasingly disrupted the nature of professions and the manner of practice thereof.

. Justice Rao: Justice NV Ramana, Chief Justice of India designate, on behalf of the Artificial Intelligence Committee, I congratulate him and wish him all the best. I am sure he will guide the Artificial Intelligence committee and give the necessary support ...

. Justice Rao: It is quite implausible that Artificial Intelligence would ever make human lawyers or judges completely redundant.

. Justice Rao: In the ... future, Artificial Intelligence will likely present a more streamlined, cost-effective and time-bound means of bringing to fruition the fundamental right of access to Justice.

. Justice Rao: Artificial Intelligence has the potential to be a tremendous asset in the justice delivery system.

. Justice Rao: The use of information technology in the Indian judicial domain kickstarted with the adoption of the national plan for implementation of ICT in the Indian Judiciary.

. Justice Rao: However, such a system can assist the judges, court staff and litigants in several ways by addressing existing bottlenecks resulting in excessive delays.

. Justice Rao: While the implementation of the e-Courts project is still underway, a need was felt for onboarding new age, cutting edge technology of machine learning and Artificial Intelligence in the judicial domain for enhancing efficiency, productivity of justice delivery

. Justice Rao: The E-Court's mission mode project, with its inception from 2007, sought to facilitate the operation of websites of various district courts, digitisation of details of cases filed and registered, and computerisation of courts at lower levels

. The Artificial Intelligence committee has identified core areas where enhanced capabilities may be unlocked by harnessing technology, Justice Rao says

. Justice Rao: This led to the Supreme Court constituting the Artificial Intelligence committee in 2019 to explore the use of Artificial Intelligence as a pivotal guide for the judiciary.

. In his speech, the President of India...in 2019 expressed his views about the judgments reaching the common man. He also exhorted the Supreme Court of finding ways and means of getting all legal documents translated to vernacular languages: Justice Rao

. Justice Rao says that these areas include the use of Artificial Intelligence

- in language technology in the translation of judicial documents,

- in process automation on the administrative side,

- legal research, assistance on the judicial side etc.

. Justice Rao: He (CJI) started discussing this with Mr Manthan Trivedi and this took shape - it took about 2 years to take shape and we are here now with the launch today.

. Justice Rao says that the use of Artificial Intelligence for legal research and assistance on the judicial side was the brainchild of CJI Bobde

. Justice Rao: We have already been successful in our attempt to translate documents and judgements into 11 languages.

. Justice Rao adds that Trivedi was assisted by Ratan Deshpande. Justice Rao thanks both Manthan Trivedi and Ratan Deshpande for developing the project and giving it to the Supreme Court without any charge.

. The Artificial Intelligence committee had reached out to Manthan Trivedi, who Justice Rao says has been closely working with the committee in developing the final tool or product being launched today.

. Justice Rao says that the Artificial Intelligence committee has found a way to catalogue information in cases for more efficacious handling of data in various cases - whether for the factual understanding of cases or dynamic use of precedents.

. Justice Rao: Development of SUPACE for criminal matters is in progress and the results are very encouraging.

. Justice Rao on the salient features of the software, says that it involves file analytics, a notebook feature allowing the user to perform tasks in a fragmented manner, indexing, bookmarking, getting suggestions on any file, extracting important facts etc.

. Justice Rao says that the Artificial Intelligence committee has resolved to put SUPACE tool to use on an experimental basis initially with the judges dealing with criminal matters in Bombay and Delhi High Courts.

. Manthan Trivedi speaks on the features of the SUPACE.

. Trivedi: The aritifical intelligence system we unveil today is a one of a kind system.

. Trivedi: SUPACE is one of a kind solution that is fully customisable and behaves uniquely like its user. The AI within it adapts and adopts user behaviour based on incremental usage of the platform. This is one of the first examples of mass customisation in the world.

. Trivedi: In the past two years, we have worked tirelessly, analysing day to day activities and tasks undertaken. by various stakeholders in the value chain of the justice delivery system.

. Trivedi: The system we are going to demonstrate today is able to find facts, issues and points of law from thousands of pages of documents in a matter of seconds.

. Trivedi: This is going to play a pivotal role in saving time and bringing unbounded efficiency in arriving at a decision. Most importantly, SUPACE provides a digital infrastructure that can further efforts and fulfil the purpose of the digitisation movement happening accross the country. SUPACE, through its robust workflow and machine learning abilities will truly unlock the unutilised power of digitsation.

. Trivedi thanks CJI Bobde for his support, says that "CJI has been an awe inspiring leader behind the AI movement in the Indian Judiciary."

. Ratan Deshpande gives a demonstration of the SUPACE tool. To view the full demonstration, click here to visit the live stream page

. Justice Rao, after the demonstration: Whatever you need is at a click of the button, which will definitiely help you in saving a lot of time. It alsogives you answers with precision. You also a research engine there, if you want judgments. It also has a facility where your law clerks can read these papers and prepare a note for you even without using paper, as Mr Deshpande was suggesting.

. CJI SA Bobde launches the Artificial Intelligence programme, SUPACE.

. CJI-designate, Justice NV Ramana invited to speak.

. Justice Ramana: Today is another important, historical day in the history of the Supreme Court as well as the Indian Judiciary, by introducing this Artificial Intelligence tool, a feather in the cap of honourable Chief Justice of India.

. Justice Ramana: I have already indicated in my earlier speeches that we are not sitting idle during COVID period or during holidays. Chief Justice of India is doing something, he is cooking something of his own...late night meeting with his delegates, technicians, producing this wonderful tool.

. Justice Ramana: You all know we are already burdened with so much of pendency. Apart from pendency, there are lot of problems, particularly finding facts and culling out of facts from the records because of the bulky volumes nowadays being filed in the court. To take out the important facts or the issues which the parties raised with the help of this tool is very easy. I think in the course of time, we will understand better, when we start using this tool.

. Justice Ramana congratulates the efforts of CJI Bobde, the techincal team, Justce Nageswar Rao and other members of the Artificial Intelligence Committee in launching the tool, "which will be helpful to the judiciary in reducing the pendency and delivering justice to needy people."

. Justice Ramana: I assure, in future days, I will also try to involve in the project and render the necessary help.

. Justice Ramana concludes his address.

. CJI SA Bobde commences his address.

. CJI Bobde: Today we are embarking on a new, and remarkably exceptional journey - the journey of embracing artificial intelligence in our routine work. It is a matter of pride that the system is being launched today.

. CJI Bobde: The little I know of the subject and the much I have asked has revealed to me that the system we are launching today is truly a pioneering effort. It is a pioneering effort because it is not like the other Artificial Intelligence systems, which I have heard about in the rest of the world, which are being used by the judiciary of Japan and some other countries.

. CJI Bobde : Artificial Intelligence, for most people, at least abroad, means automated decision making. That has given rise to very serious objections and I fully join in those objections . Because, it is our view and it is also consistent with the sense of independence of each human mind, of each judge, that the decision must be left to him. A machine ought not to dictate it. It is in this sense, that the system we have launched today is unique because there is an interaction between the human being and the machine which produces remarkable results - results customised to the need of the case, results customised to the way. the judge thinks and many other such things which are individual.

. CJI Bobde: This objection, criticism that we keep on hearing in relation to artificial intelligence is totally unwarranted when it comes to our systembecause this is a system which is designed to process facts, to make them available to a judge who wants to know them as an input to a decision making and to enable him to exercise his intelligence, his judgment, his sense of right and wrong and deliver judgment.

. CJI Bobde: Many of us, some years ago, gave little thought to artificial intelligence. Until 1997, when news broke that grandmaster Garry Kasparov, the world Chess Champion had been beaten by. acomputer system called deep blue... suddenly people woke up to this extrordinary technology... since there has been an exponential growth.

. CJi Bobde: It is very interesting that Kasparov won most of the games and lost 1. The point is that the 'deep blue' had not been programmed to understand Kasparov's moves. The more deep blue was used, the more it was used to play the grandmaster, it became better and better and th grandmaster began to lose more and more games - simply because of the phenomenal capacity to analyse without any emotions.

. CJI Bobde: We must remember that Artificial Intelligence is to the intellect what muscle memory is to our mind. It grows with practice and continuous use ... It helps to save a lot of time which the mind uses to wade through facts hidden in voluminous briefs by going through any number of pages at the speed of 1 million characters per second.

. CJI Bobde: Since it is a machine, there is no end to the amount of load it can take and the number of answers it can give...this is where we, the Indian judiciary, are going to stop using it - after it has given all the information and analysed all the examples. We are not going to let it (Artificial Intelligence) spill over to decision making...As I said, it full retains the autonomy and the discretion of the Judge in deciding the case, though at a much faster pace at which the readiness of information is made available by AI.

. CJI Bobde: Justice Rao also mentioned the translation system which has done a lot of progress. The kind of translation it can give are remarkably accurate. You still need the manual translator to see certain phrases, and the manual translator corrects those phrases. Once he has corrected a particular error, the system does not commit that error again and the translation gets better and better.

. CJI Bobde: I believe that an Artificial Intelligence system that decides the case could be disastrous to the judiciary, which is continuously dealing with human problems, where human discretion is of the greatest importance. We have taken sufficient care to ensure that the AI collects all the relevant facts and law and makes it available to the Judge at his fingertips, but doesn't in any way suggest a decision.

. CJI Bobde says that he believes that the AI system developed may be "the perfect blend of human intelligence and machine learning."

. CJI Bobde: The system may therefore be called a hybrid one. It works together with human intelligence.

. CJI Bobde: Another apprehension that needs to be allayed - and I am happy to speak about this in the presence of Justice Ramana - is the generation of unemployment if the system is adopted. There is no question of that. It is intended to do what the human mind can do, but much more efficiently, methodically and systematically.

. CJI Bobde: All too important tasks of making entries in the register with many columns can be done by the AIwith astonishing speed and accuracy, which might not be possible for a human being. I am talking about our Registries - every court has a registry...

. CJI Bobde: The only consequence that one can see is that AI can cut down on the over work and the over time that officers in the registry are subjected to.

. CJI Bobde recalls that after introduction of computerisation at the Bombay High Court years earlier, although there was initialy opposition, the members of the Registry found that they could finish their work faster and go home early

. CJI Bobde: It might also enable heads of departments to divert the time generated by the completion of repetitive tasks to other tasks which are equally important.

. CJI Bobde says that the AI tool launched today can achieve incredible results if used rightly and that he hopes it does. He concludes his address by thanking Justice Nageswar Rao, the artificial intelligence team, High Court committees and Justice NV Ramana "for agreeing to come to this function, his first one as a Chief Justice desginate."

. Event has concluded after the vote of thanks by the Registrar of the Supreme Court.

Historic day, a feather in the cap of CJI Bobde: Justice NV Ramana on launch of Artificial Intelligence tool, SUPAC [LIVE UPDATES]

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