An artificial intelligence (AI) program to assist with drafting court rulings, jointly developed by the Judicial Yuan and Chunghwa Telecom (中華電信), would begin a trial run as soon as late next month, after preliminary reviews, sources said yesterday.
Overtime at courts was common due to a great deal of paperwork that has to be processed, which prompted increased efforts to digitize court processes, from allowing remote court attendance to developing AI programs to decrease clerks’ workloads, the Judicial Yuan said.
Criminal court judges had to process 56.1 cases per month in 2013, which had risen to 59.67 per month last year, the source said on condition of anonymity.
Photo: Wu Cheng-feng, Taipei Times
One-quarter of them were driving under the influence (DUI) cases, the source said.
The AI program uses the MT5 large language model, the source said.
It was fed rulings, precedents and legal terminology from rulings from 1996 to 2021, and was trained to produce legal documents in the format used in Taiwan, they said.
Judges had been happy with the preliminary results, they added.
The system is to assist the courts by generating ruling notices for DUI cases, or aiding and abetting in fraud cases, as they are considered single-offense cases, the source said.
A judge would specify whether a defendant was found guilty or not guilty, whether they confessed or denied the charges, legal acts applicable to the case, whether corpus delicti — the principle that no one should be convicted of a crime without sufficient evidence that the crime actually occurred — is met, and select the option for the AI to proceed with a draft, which would include citation of procedural law or legal articles, the source said.
The output would include the opening, the body of the ruling, the verdict, the facts, the reasons for the ruling and the legal citations, they said.
The program is to take precedence into account to gauge the sentence, the source said.
A judge would review the draft and, if satisfied, could immediately enter it into the system as the ruling, greatly decreasing the time spent on draft writing, they said.
The Judicial Yuan on Tuesday is to select the courts at which the system is to be trialed, the source added.
One of two tropical depressions that formed off Taiwan yesterday morning could turn into a moderate typhoon by the weekend, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Tropical Depression No. 21 formed at 8am about 1,850km off the southeast coast, CWA forecaster Lee Meng-hsuan (李孟軒) said. The weather system is expected to move northwest as it builds momentum, possibly intensifying this weekend into a typhoon, which would be called Mitag, Lee said. The radius of the storm is expected to reach almost 200km, she said. It is forecast to approach the southeast of Taiwan on Monday next week and pass through the Bashi Channel
NO CHANGE: The TRA makes clear that the US does not consider the status of Taiwan to have been determined by WWII-era documents, a former AIT deputy director said The American Institute in Taiwan’s (AIT) comments that World War-II era documents do not determine Taiwan’s political status accurately conveyed the US’ stance, the US Department of State said. An AIT spokesperson on Saturday said that a Chinese official mischaracterized World War II-era documents as stating that Taiwan was ceded to the China. The remarks from the US’ de facto embassy in Taiwan drew criticism from the Ma Ying-jeou Foundation, whose director said the comments put Taiwan in danger. The Chinese-language United Daily News yesterday reported that a US State Department spokesperson confirmed the AIT’s position. They added that the US would continue to
The number of Chinese spouses applying for dependent residency as well as long-term residency in Taiwan has decreased, the Mainland Affairs Council said yesterday, adding that the reduction of Chinese spouses staying or living in Taiwan is only one facet reflecting the general decrease in the number of people willing to get married in Taiwan. The number of Chinese spouses applying for dependent residency last year was 7,123, down by 2,931, or 29.15 percent, from the previous year. The same census showed that the number of Chinese spouses applying for long-term residency and receiving approval last year stood at 2,973, down 1,520,
EASING ANXIETY: The new guide includes a section encouraging people to discuss the threat of war with their children and teach them how to recognize disinformation The Ministry of National Defense’s All-Out Defense Mobilization Agency yesterday released its updated civil defense handbook, which defines the types of potential military aggression by an “enemy state” and self-protection tips in such scenarios. The agency has released three editions of the handbook since 2022, covering information from the preparation of go-bags to survival tips during natural disasters and war. Compared with the previous edition, released in 2023, the latest version has a clearer focus on wartime scenarios. It includes a section outlining six types of potential military threats Taiwan could face, including destruction of critical infrastructure and most undersea cables, resulting in
RSS