Directing AI for Better and Smarter Legislation
Introduction:
- The topic of artificial intelligence (AI) is grabbing the attention of businesspeople, politicians, and legislators everywhere. The majority of developed democracies currently employ AI techniques to create better laws and parliamentary processes.
Using AI in law:
- In contrast to the intelligence exhibited by people and other animals, artificial intelligence (AI) is the intelligence displayed by robots. Speech recognition, computer vision, interlanguage translation, and various mappings of inputs are a few examples of activities where this is done.
AI tools can help legislators with:
- creating briefs that provide information on specific House rules, developing amendments, interventions, etc., preparing responses for legislators, improving research quality, and learning about any Bill.
- Insights into public complaints, media viewpoints, and voices of citizen-centric associations can help legislators make informed decisions.
Numerous challenges:
- We must first define our laws in India before AI can function here. The issues with current laws are that they are opaque, complex, and there is a significant translation gap between organizations that make laws, implement laws, and interpret laws.
- The India Code webpage was a good idea from the Indian government, but it cannot be completely trusted as the “one source of truth.” Any entity should be able to obtain a 360-degree perspective thanks to the interface’s comprehensive chain of legislation, which should extend from the parent Act to all subsidiary laws passed by the central government and the amendment notifications.
- With a central law engine that can serve as a single source of truth for all acts, subsidiary pieces of legislation, gazettes, compliances, and regulations, we need to make laws machine consumable. When a person wants to verify whether they are eligible for welfare programs, it should be so compliant that AI can analyze their complaints and social media replies to identify problems and top priorities that require quick attention. It can help legislators prepare a manifesto and solicit citizen participation for public legislation consultation.
Globalization and AI:
- The American House of Representatives has implemented an AI tool to automate the comparison of differences between bills, amendments, and existing legislation.
- For instance, the Dutch House of Representatives has deployed the “Speech2Write” system, which “translates” spoken reports into written reports as well as voice to text.
- The AI tool used in Japan helps with the automatic identification of pertinent highlights during legislative discussions as well as the drafting of responses for the country’s legislature.
- Ulysses is an AI system created in Brazil that promotes openness and public participation.
AI and India:
- The National eVidhan (NeVA) portal and the “One Nation, One Application” initiative are two examples of how India is innovating and attempting to digitize parliamentary processes.
- AI is also capable of predicting the outcomes of a policy and simulating the effects of legislation. Also, it might be useful in identifying laws that need to be amended since they are out of date with the times.
- Not only this, but the Indian Criminal Code (IPC) also has numerous other contentious and unnecessary sections. For instance, violating IPC Section 309 (attempted suicide) is still a crime.
- The Digital India project and the digitization of services and transactions have received a significant boost from the COVID-19 epidemic. Using the potential of AI, this momentum needs to be maintained and applied to the fields of law, policymaking, and parliamentary activity.
Conclusion:
- When doing all of this, it must be ensured that the use of AI is promoted in a way that is open, transparent, and supportive of citizens. Although AI is a potent tool, we should always keep in mind that it serves as a tool to achieve a goal rather than a goal in and of itself.
