Protecting Judicial Decisions in the Age of Artificial Intelligence A New Challenge to the Rule of Law

In a world where a large percentage of children are learning how to interact expertly with electronic devices and navigate mobile operating systems before they can even speak, and have grown up with the non-existence of the idea of “disconnecting” with the constant flow of content on the screen, it is no longer possible to reject development and adapt to the requirements of the new stage as we are on the brink of the fifth industrial revolution [1] in which artificial intelligence technologies merge with the work of the human element, and robots coexist with humans. Whatever the name given to the next technological era, and whatever the number it will be labeled with, it will be the last era of inventions and discoveries that humans alone will accomplish exclusively. This prompts experts in the field to consider that “merging with artificially intelligent technology will be like learning how to live with a new gender” [2]. In recent years in particular, artificial intelligence technology has achieved remarkable successes that have proven its pioneering capabilities, and the discussion about it has not remained confined to academic circles, but has occupied the front rows in the halls of official decision-making, and competing voices have risen around it from the highest platforms [3]. The contributions of AI technologies to combating the coronavirus pandemic are still fresh in our minds. Robots have been used to reduce human contact; there are nursing robots, delivery robots, surveillance drones, sterilizing robots, and mobile robots that detect infected people on the street. Big data technologies are also being used to examine surveillance cameras on the streets to recognize faces, as happened in China, where an algorithm combines the health record, the criminal file, and the public transport travel map to identify all the people who have been in contact with the infected person, and quarantine him as a result [4]. Because this reality has begun to cast its shadow on the judicial systems with the entry of artificial intelligence systems into the justice sector, imposing its challenges on them, and even throwing its problems in their face, the judicial decision has become facing serious challenges that raise legitimate questions on the research table, the answers to which converge with the strategic direction of Oman Vision 2040 in the field of legislation, judiciary, and oversight in terms of strengthening the rule of law in society and achieving community security, and in general, it addresses the application of the foundations of governance in the organization of legislation and judiciary, and revolves around the extent of the benefit of introducing artificial intelligence systems in the stage of preparing the judicial decision and the limits of this benefit on the one hand (section one), and the extent of the possibility of using these systems in the stage of building the judicial decision itself on the other hand (section two).