Law Commons^™

Emerging Technology’S Language Wars: Ai And Criminal Justice, Carla L. Reyes

Faculty Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Work at the intersection of Artificial Intelligence systems (AI systems) and criminal justice suffers from a distinct linguistic disadvantage. As a highly interdisciplinary area of inquiry, researchers, lawmakers, software developers, engineers, judges, and the public all talk past each other, using the same words but as different terms of art. Evidence of these language wars largely derives from anecdote. To better assess the nature and scope of the problem, this Article uses corpus linguistics to reveal inherent value conflicts embedded in definitional differences and debates. Doing so offers a tool for reconciling specific linguistic ambiguities before they are embedded in …