Meet the scholar 

Atmaja Tripathy
2023 Commonwealth Shared Scholar
University of Cambridge

Atmaja is an India-qualified lawyer with experience in dispute resolution, mainly commercial disputes, focusing on intellectual property, technology, media, telecommunication, competition and arbitration. She has represented clients before the Indian Supreme Court, state high courts, specialised tribunals, and arbitration forums. Atmaja was among the youngest lawyers on IBLJ’s Future Legal Leaders list in 2022, and a finalist in Asia Legal Business’ Rising Star (India & Middle East) Award 2023. Atmaja holds an LLM in commercial law from the University of Cambridge as a fully funded Commonwealth Shared and Cambridge Trust Scholar. 

About the Poster

AI and Judicial Decision Making: Striking A Balance

The poster is based on my Master's dissertation which explores differing scholarly opinions on the suitability of judicial decision making (JDM) by machine-driven automatic decision-making (ADM). While AI bias is a crucial concern associated with ADM, behavioural economic theories demonstrate that JDM also suffers from bias and heuristics. If JDM encompasses bias, is it still preferred to ADM? The poster responds to this.

The present dissertation explores how to strike a delicate balance between AI, ADM, and JDM. It sets out some key concepts and principles surrounding AI, ML, natural language processing, judgment, and JDM, which are relevant to understanding the debate between JDM and ADM. Thereafter, it sets down evolving legal theories such as legal singularity which promotes use and replacement of AI for JDM. Along with this, the practical roadblocks in adopting AI in JDM is elucidated to provide a clear picture on the adaptability and acceptability of AI in judiciary. The research provides illustrative instances from different jurisdictions that have adopted AI-assisted online dispute resolution. In the final segment it proposes measures how we can best strike a balance in successfully adoting AI which aids justice dispensation and JDM.