Can Ai Help Resolve Some Fundamental Puzzles of Judicial Proof?: Introductory Comments About the Explosive Dynamic Complexity of Evidentiary Processes Associated with Litigation

21 Pages Posted: 13 Apr 2005

See all articles by Peter Tillers

Peter Tillers

Yeshiva University - Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law

Date Written: April 2000

Abstract

Two or three years ago I began searching the internet in earnest for insights into evidence in litigation. (I admit it: I am an internet addict!) I quickly discovered that there is a large number of people in AI and in related fields who are actively discussing, debating, and exploring matters such as uncertain inference; decision making under uncertainty; classical probability theory; statistical inference; value of information theory; semantic fuzziness and roughness; planning and scheduling; distributed decision making; non-deductive reasoning; induction, abductive inference, and hypothesis-formation; information retrieval & database mining; multi-stage or cascaded inference; influence diagrams; causal reasoning; common sense reasoning; defeasible reasoning; temporal logic; dynamic logic or reasoning; and a wide variety of even more esoteric matters - matters such as artificial life and a mathematical theory of hints.

I discovered another interesting thing. I discovered that many of theories, methods, and procedures in the sorts of fields or areas I have just mentioned have been converted into software programs. I also found out that many people who think of themselves as AI people also seem to think of themselves as Bayesians, fuzzy probability theorists, and other such things; I discovered that many people who do AI have done important work with matters such as Bayes nets, common sense reasoning, defeasible reasoning, dialogic reasoning, default logic(s), fuzzy sets, and so on -- and on - and on.

After watching Deep Thought defeat Kasparov, I decided that it was high time that legal professionals who study or manage evidentiary processes in litigation learn something about developments in AI and related fields; I concluded that it was high time that people in AI and related fields educate legal specialists in forensic investigation, evidence, and proof about relevant developments in AI and allied fields.

I believe that AI people very probably do have interesting and important things to tell people such as me. I believe this because as I scan the sorts of matters that AI people grapple with I see that many of those matters involve uncertainty, complexity, and time. I believe that some of the most intractable mysteries about the workings of evidentiary processes in litigation and the effects of societal regulation of such processes have to do with the combination of uncertainty, complexity, and time. These ingredients, when combined with the ingredient of human imagination, make it almost impossibly hard for mere mortals to understand how judicial proof works.

Suggested Citation

Tillers, Peter, Can Ai Help Resolve Some Fundamental Puzzles of Judicial Proof?: Introductory Comments About the Explosive Dynamic Complexity of Evidentiary Processes Associated with Litigation (April 2000). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=692622

Peter Tillers (Contact Author)

Yeshiva University - Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law ( email )

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New York, NY 10003
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