AI will contribute to credibility

Opposition leaders allege that India’s independent institutions have compromised their independence. Aspersions are being cast on the credibility of every institution in the country, ranging from our regulators, judiciary, Election Commission, and the premier investigative agencies like the Enforcement Directorate and CBI. The public at large has lost confidence in the professionalism of our law and order machinery.

The Government of India and various state governments have been progressively digitising their interface with citizens, thereby making it easier to get licenses, certificates, and payments of taxes, thereby bringing efficiency to government services and reducing corruption. In a similar manner, our premier institutions can use intuitive AI in their decision-making processes to bring in transparency.

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Embedding intuitive Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the decision-making process of our premier institutions can help the mandarins manning these institutions and eliminate the emotional/partisan biases.

In the US Supreme Court, there will be nine judges, who will all sit together and decide all the matters. In India, the members of the bench are usually appointed by the chief justice of the respective high court or supreme court, and a chief justice can also be present on the bench. There have been controversies over the powers of the chief justice in the constitution of benches in India.

The power to constitute the benches also indirectly implies the power to shape the judgements and the justice delivered. If a chief justice is so inclined, he may pack the benches with judges who will uphold a particular view. To eliminate any such perceived subjectivity in the constitution of the benches, AI can be a better tool to objectively constitute the benches based on the analytics of past benches and various other parameters. Or else, all the judges of the respective high court or supreme court can sit together and decide on all the matters, like in the US.

Fourteen political parties in India have approached the Supreme Court against the alleged misuse of central investigating agencies such as the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in investigating opposition political leaders. As per media reports, since 2014, there has been a four-fold
jump in ED cases against opposition politicians.

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However, ED officials say that cases are lodged after proper scrutiny. The Supreme Court has also refused to entertain the plea filed by 14 political parties. Here also, intuitive AI can bring in ‘objectivity’ in the selection of cases relating to financial irregularities, money laundering, and corruption for investigation by the ED and CBI, based on the criteria of the proportionality of the amounts involved, the resources available with the agencies, and their constraints—a sort of linear programming (LP) model. LP, also called linear optimisation, is a method used in business decisions to achieve the best outcome in a mathematical model whose requirements are represented by linear relationships.

In a controversial decision, the EC broke from convention in October 2022 by not simultaneously announcing polls in Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh, even though the terms of the two state assemblies expire within a few weeks of each other. “There are a number of factors, like weather. We want to hold the Himachal elections before the onset of snow,” Chief Election Commissioner Rajiv Kumar then said. Rajiv Kumar also said no rules were violated and the EC went by the convention set in 2017 when elections to both states were announced separately. In such controversial decisions, AI can be used to schedule the election dates based on factors like deployment of forces, terrain, weather, expiry dates of the current assembly, and past traditions.

Globally, the public sector, private industry, academia, and civil society are engaging in ongoing debates over the promises and perils of AI. It is affecting the ways in which we do business, govern, and interact socially. The use of intuitive AI in the decision-making process of our independent institutions can be a game-changer to restore their eroding credibility.

(The writer is a retired corporate professional.)