A friend of mine just defended his law PhD and in the introductory lectio said that (even) current LLMs would likely give better verdicts than human judges. Law isn't really a cognitively such demanding task as walking a dog or waiting tables.
He probably meant _brainwashed_ LLMs. They can consistently produce desired results if you wash them the right way. It's more about personal opinion than computation. Actually it would be fun to manipulate verdicts with prompt injections ;)
With the caveat that this applies to sane legal systems, and not the ones where "making examples" etc are part of the system.
hmm.. :) I like this. But the reality is very different and some factors which shouldn't matter can change the outcome dramatically. Like skin colors of defendant and judge. Pointing this out can be punished as well.
It's a blind spot that too many people have because we take those qualities for granted. LLMs unbundle them, so we need to start recognising the inherent value of humans, fast. I wrote a few words about it here: https://dgroshev.com/blog/feel-bad/
Someone has to make a call. The weight of the call rests on the person's life experience, their understanding of the context and the cost to the society, their empathy to both the defendant and the accused, and their conscience. Treating it as a black box exercise misses the point completely.