AI court errors would be ‘too much for society to comprehend’, David Lammy says

The consequences of artificial intelligence making mistakes in court would be “too much for any society to comprehend”, Justice Secretary David Lammy has said.

The Deputy Prime Minister said there are teams within Government working to make sure the effects of so-called AI hallucinations “are not overly significant”.

Mr Lammy was speaking after announcing that virtual legal assistants powered by AI will be rolled out to crown courts across the country in an effort to tackle the rising backlog of cases.

The assistants will be trialled in controlled environments before being used by judges and lawyers, the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said.

Judges will also have access to an AI tool for finding trial-ready cases and group similar hearings together to make the most of already stretched court time.

Concerns have been raised about the dangers of ramping up the use of AI.

The Law Society of England and Wales called on the Government to make the outcome of any AI assistant trials public.

A review into the banning of Maccabi Tel Aviv football fans from attending a football match against Aston Villa in November found an “AI hallucination” produced by Microsoft Copilot had helped police justify the move.

The error meant a non-existent game between Tel Aviv and West Ham had been referenced in a report produced by the police force prior to the game.

Speaking at London Tech Week on Tuesday, former barrister Mr Lammy said: “It’s about scaling at the appropriate level and about the teams of people who are looking at that data to get it right and trying to ensure that the consequences, where there can be hallucination or error, are not overly significant.

“Certainly that would be the case with criminal justice, or indeed any of the justice arenas, because the consequences of it being wrong are too much for any society to comprehend.”

He added: “(AI) does present challenges, which is why you don’t begin with rolling out national models, you have to pilot, you have to test.

“My department’s good at that.”