Abstract
In this chapter, Butler explores potential realities of technocratic automation at the intersection of criminal sentencing, artificial intelligence (AI), and race. The chapter begins with a synopsis of the role automation plays in technocratic electronic governance. It then moves to demonstrate how the implementation of automation has adversely affected Black communities. Butler then illustrates how AI is currently outpacing human performance, implying that soon in the realm of criminal sentencing, artificially intelligent judges will emerge, outperforming and eventually replacing human judges. Next, he applies the lens of race to outline how current concepts of artificial cognitive architectures merely reiterate oppressive racial biases. The chapter concludes by imagining how contemplative overlays might be applied to artificial cognitive architectures to allow for more mindful and just sentencing.
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Notes
- 1.
Blackness is a term I choose over African American, mainly because the fact that American has a disclaimer for Black bodies is problematic for me. Some Black folks prefer the term African American. I do not. If I have to place a caveat to my American identity in front of my American identity then it somehow demonstrates that I am not fully American. You do not see the term White American. There is not even the term European American. The assumption normally is that if you are American then you are white—and vice versa.
- 2.
Certain laws already have minimum punishments or automatic punitive actions.
- 3.
Path dependence is essentially the use of long-term implementation to test and determine the accuracy of a newly implemented governmental policy. It justifies the keeping of policies and procedures in place for its need to determine longitudinal efficiency often overlooking initial setbacks. But it does applaud early stage success. Fountain, On the Effects of e-Government, 473.
- 4.
A theoretical sketch of the added layers of associated with laws becoming digital ontologies might assume this structure: Environment (where everything happens), People (that are governed and live in the environment), Data (contains raw info from real world interactions between people, other people and the environment), Technical specialists (who process data), Democratic Process (If this is the structure of the government, it includes the legislation process—legislators, voters, etc.), Programmers (writers of code), Hardware (components that are run on previously written software that allow for the creation of new code to write new software geared toward legislation), Storage (multiple hardware units, that together, maintain the relationship between data, hardware and software for the continual running of the system), Code (in the specific case of digital ontologies, it is the logic used to run contingency models—based on the processes created by technical specialists however programmers can also serve as technical specialists—through the structure of a particular programming language to create a functioning software program used to determine outcomes and the implementation of laws), Media (websites, phones, digital applications, etc.), and People. It could be argued that these structures already mimic previous governmental modes of layering (legislation process, paper, storage, people), but the added layering of technology, technical experts and technologically mediated storage units (which can be backed up in a cloud , another layer altogether) make it an incredibly more buttressed system. This is admittedly a very linear approach. It does not begin to include the added variables of the inverse parallel process of the order I’ve created or most importantly the invariable way that these layers can be by passed. For example, the communality of personhood needs to be accounted for as to how someone who is governed can either influence another person in the order, i.e. legislator, technical specialist of programmer, or have the ability to become one of those roles or not based on socioeconomic status or other marginalizations.
- 5.
Some might argue that religion or reasoned based morality were the bases for law creation and castigation principles. But the emotions that were fostered from the acceptance of either religious dogma or reason—as normative—helped determine the severity of punishment. It also helped to determine priorities based on perceptions of vulnerability, privilege, in-group and out-group.
- 6.
Neutral emotion falls into two categories. The first is non-reactive emotionality, which is a reference to a state of calm (often experienced from a spiritual practice—mindfulness, Jesus prayer, compassion practice, etc.). The second form of neutral emotions manifest as individual emotional homeostasis. It is where an individual is neither particularly aroused nor calm. Although emotions are involuntary electro-biochemical responses/reactions a neutral emotion is not neutral because it is not influenced by outside stimuli. It is neutral because of the perception of the individual experiencing a state of emotional equilibrium.
- 7.
This includes the trying of Black defendants who were children as adults, 28 year operation that sold Black teen defendants into prison, and the utter disregard for the personhood of Black defendants in judging, policing and projection of certain images in society by social elite, that is, super predators by Hillary Clinton, animals by scientific racists, etc.
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Butler, P. (2018). Technocratic Automation and Contemplative Overlays in Artificially Intelligent Criminal Sentencing. In: Giorgino, V., Walsh, Z. (eds) Co-Designing Economies in Transition. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66592-4_14
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