Section: New Results

Liability and ethics

Participants : Jacques Lévy Véhel, Jérôme Dupré

Some legal issues are specifically related to the calculation error. The system user may not have entered the data correctly and then will be responsible for the displayed result (but it is possible to display the entered data with the results to limit this risk).

The user may also have entered the data correctly and: -he/she is aware of the error of the system, in which case the user regains a share of responsibility, -he/she is not aware of the error of the system and the error is not easily detectable, then the responsibility should move towards the authors of the system conception (with its different steps that result from each other: definition of the search criteria, creation of database and creation of the algorithm, development and integration of the software, etc.). -he/she is not aware of the error of the system and the error is easily detectable, in which case the user should regain at least some responsibility.

The use of systems designed to judicial risk quantification entails paradigm shift The probabilistic approach, where all things are equal, seems very far from the hierarchy of legal norms and legal causality. In the absence of any upheaval in the law, we can at least expect an upheaval in legal practice.

Ultimately, the use of predictive tools, which favors the discovery of correlations, may lead to less attention to the causes of events, hence the need to maintain a vigilance on this aspect. The human who "delegates everything" to the machine should not avoid responsibility.

From an ethical perspective, is it acceptable to calculate the sentence which is likely to be pronounced in penal law, e.g. for a crime? Should we accept to profile judges using all their past rulings?

More generally, a reflection as well as a study on the place left to the human at all the stages of the process of elaboration and use (the decision-making) of the predictive tools seems necessary.