MANILA, Philippines — The Supreme Court (SC) is eyeing artificial intelligence (AI) to expedite court proceedings, particularly in terms of translating testimonies in the vernacular to English.
Speaking at the Senate subcommittee on finance’s Wednesday deliberations on the proposed 2025 budget of the judiciary, Sen. Grace Poe asked how AI can help expedite processes in the SC apart from research.
At the end of Poe’s prodding was SC Court Administrator Raul Villanueva who explained that they are presently using AI to monitor cases.
“[B]ecause the SC would like to make sure that our judges and of course eventually our justices would be able to monitor the progress of their cases so that aging cases can be given priority as well,” said Villanueva.
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Apart from this, he explained that the SC is already “developing voice to text transcription.”
“[H]opefully we can come up with an AI that can translate… testimonies in one dialect… converted already into, for example, Ilocano to English. That’s also something we’re already looking into. In fact, we are doing something with respect to some programs we’re conducting, we’re using AI to translate some messages, some speeches that are being given in the vernacular and translate it into English already,” Villanueva said.
Later in the hearing, Justice Mario V. Lopez emphasized that they are not entirely dependent on AI, noting that “there is also some iniquitous consideration in the decision.”
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“In fact, there are some decision[s] which should not [be] left to the control of the AI because the court is not only a court of law, but we are also a court of equity. There is some humanity involved in the disposition of cases,” said Lopez.
He said despite the contributions of AI, humanity is always way ahead of technology.
“[I]n fact now I am the Bar [exam] chair for 2024. Indeed, there were some questions that were referred to the AI and I reviewed over it, they are not exactly correct. So that means, the human mind is still better. Humanity will still prevail [over] AI,” he said.