Meet Judge R2-D2 [PHIL-OSOPHY]

What's going to happen to people's lives as thousands wait and wait for filing for divorce, or small claims, or parents seeking custody of children, all who've seen their cases placed on ice during this pandemic of COVID-19. And I'm not even considering the more than 1,800 state trials postponed.

For a lot of that backlog, we should let Artificial Intelligence adjudicate the disputes. Robot judges can unravel, get to the bottom of and settle feuds as good as a human, in most cases. Scientists say bots are able to conclude with a 99 percent accuracy rate.

Whether we want it or not, the future is speeding towards us, so why not get a jump start on implementing "digital justice" in the Commonwealth? Proceedings will be quicker and fairer, whereby human emotion, bias and error will become a thing of the past.

In China, AI judges have been successfully settling disputes, copyright cases and other claims since 2017. And the mobile court there has already handled about three million legal cases, clearing up much of their backlog. Two opposing parties will upload documents to support their claims and AI technology will analyze the submissions and issue a decision. We can do the same here.

I want you to know, my good friends who teach law or have private practices are cussing me out right now and part of me can't blame them a bit, but consider this: if either party is dissatisfied with the AI outcome, they can always appeal the decision to a human judge.

Phil Paleologos is the host of The Phil Paleologos Show on 1420 WBSM New Bedford. He can be heard weekdays from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. Contact him at phil@wbsm.com and follow him on Twitter @PhilPaleologos. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.