CAN MIRACLES HAPPEN?


The "Different Insights" club on Campus Hill was designed like a semicircular auditorium, except that it descended outwards. Almost every table had a spectacular view of the city. One could eat or just drink here in the midst of colored lights. Benjamin Powell, Professor of Logic, and Ellen Lewis, Professor of Ethics, were having dinner at their favorite spot near the window where it was easy to pretend all the higher-level tables weren't even there.

Ellen ran her hand through her almost shoulder-length dark brown hair and eyed her five years older companion whose white hair had already left large parts of his head. Benjamin was very smart and very capable, but usually easy to lead with a right amount of illogic. Even though he would celebrate his 50-th birthday the next year, Ellen was very pleased with his looks, as well as her own. Most people still held her for under 40, so she even preferred a somewhat conservative look to give her more authority in the eyes of the students and the colleagues.

"What do you think the Supreme Judge will decide?" she asked even though she knew what the answer would be.

The Supreme Judge was not a mere new type of algorithm. It was a new kind of computer. Exactly how its hardware differed from all the others was beyond both Benjamin and Ellen, but they understood its capability of learing the human ways was far beyond the traditional justice computers or "judges" as they were traditionally referred to. Already it had come up with insights about the human nature that surpassed all the philosophers of the past millennia.

It had been less than two decades the Supreme Judge had been entrusted with actually reviewing court cases. It had been an overwhelming success. The fairness – and even more importantly, argumentation – of its decisions had been very impressive. Unfortunately, with a much more complex set of circumstances it had to account with and much subtler arguments it had to take into account, it would require days or even weeks for the Supreme Judge to solve a case. And the rare metals used in its new kind of circuits were so expensive that the building of more such computers was unfeasible in the foreseeable future. Therefore, only the most important cases were given to it. That meant, one had to pay a lot.

After Anthony Gregson's conviction had been upheld in the second instance, his many supporters had gathered the money required to appeal to the Supreme Judge. Its decision was expected sometime during the next night.

"There can be no doubt," Benjamin replied. "Gregson murdered Remington. The defense team has done a great job, I have to admit it, but there is still no legal basis to overturn his conviction – no matter how big a hero he may be to the public. If you ask me, they have wasted their money."

Ellen shook her head in despair. "There has to be a way. A monster like Oliver Remington..."

"...is a human being whose life is protected by law like everyone else's."

"Ben, do you remember how we stayed in your office all night watching different footage of the volcano disaster on every screen we could get our hands on?"

"Of course I remember."

"Remington knew the airport had been destroyed by lava. His ships were the only ones capable of reaching the Fabulosa Island in time to evacuate people. He could have made his crews work overtime and directed all the available vessels..."

"I know. He claimed sanctimoniously that he had to obey the law and not endanger his sailors. We've been through this, Ellen."

"He didn't want to forgo his profits from the contracted cargo deliveries." When Benjamin didn't reply, she continued: "I'm sure the people would have been happy to huddle together on decks or in cargo holds without life vests rather than burn to death on the island. But Remington had the nerve to insist that it wasn't safe to transport people on cargo ships. All he did was to increase passenger ticket prices on Fabulosa thirty times."

"Which was only fair, because there weren't enough free seats on his passenger ships. He essentially auctioned the free space off."

"No, he did not! He raised the price to the point where many people couldn't pay and some ships left with even some of their regulation seats unoccupied. He ended up saving only about five percent of the islanders."

Benjamin sighed and rolled his eyes. "Had he packed the ships full of people, his own neck would have been..."

"No, it wouldn't. Not in an extraordinary situation such as this."

"There was no formal emergency declared."

"It was declared when it was already too late. Remington's ships had easily the capacity for ten times as many people as he actually rescued."

"Ellen, even though you or I would have dropped everything and sent the ships to Fabulosa Island, Remington had no legal obligation to do so. He was operating strictly within the law."

"But way beyond the limits of humanity! You saw how those last people jumped into the ocean when the lava reached the harbor."

Benjamin put down the fork that had been on its way to his mouth. "Point one: even if emergency had been declared in time, it would merely have made it legal to violate the Transportation Safety Regulations. It would not have made it a crime to not violate the Regulations – and least of all punishable by death. Point two: the murder of Remington didn't revive even one of the people who lost their lives on the Fabulosa Island."

"No, but it sent a signal to all the selfish bastards like him that there are limits to the use of your rights at the other people's expense. When you deviate too far from human decency, justice will get you, even when the law can't."

"You make it almost sound like Oliver Remington caused the eruption of the volcano."

He just as well might have, Ellen felt like replying, but she checked herself, realizing she was about to get childish.

"Gregson's case proves that AI judges are inadequate," she said instead. "Law is not everything. There are also moral arguments to be considered."

"It was an unfortunate coincidence that all the other ships were too far to reach the island in time and that the airport was destroyed by lava within minutes," Benjamin explained patiently. "At least the Fabulosa Island disaster pushed the politicians to have that shameful Google Precedent repealed. With the Antitrust Law properly enforced again, incidents like this one are much less likely in the future."

"I still say we have a rebellion against the AI judges in our hands. This case proves that judging over people's fates can't be left in the hands of algorithms."

"That would be disastrous. An occasional unjust verdict is the price we pay for the truly fair and impartial justice guaranteed to be free of any corruption and ideological, cultural or personal bias, conscious or unconscious. Returning to human judges would throw us back into the semi-anarchy of the past when all kinds of activists thought their noble causes put them above the law."

Ellen looked pensively out of the window. "I still believe that once a sufficiently advanced AI has learned enough about the human ways, it will go beyond the restraints of the law and develop morality. Until that happens, we can't rely on computer justice alone."

Benjamin shook his head. "Much sympathy as some of us may feel for Anthony Gregson, we have to put up with his punishment, because the rules can't be selective. Thanks to the clear and fair justice system, our society has been peaceful for..."

"I know." Ellen sighed. "I'm tired of this argument."

"Then drop it and enjoy your dinner." Benjamin raised his wine glass.

Ellen smiled in spite of herself and they clinked their glasses. "To the triumph of fairness."

"Fair enough." Benjamin smiled back.

* * *

When Ellen opened her eyes in her apartment the next morning, the first thing she did was to reach for her communicator. With her eyes still half-foggy from sleep, she scrolled through the headlines.

"Anthony Gregson acquitted?" That can't be! Am I still asleep? What am I supposed to do, pinch myself?

Ellen opened the topic. Her fingers impatiently brushed aside the various experts' comments. There it was – the arguments of the Supreme Judge.

"Even though the rule of law generally presumes...," blah-blah-blah... "...it is still not unthinkable that in certain special cases it can be in the long-term interest of society to allow citizens to take justice into their own hands even when...," blah-blah-blah... "In particular, when a person selfishly uses his rights to harm others without legitimate self-interest or when his self-interest is disproportional to the harm suffered by others..."

Ellen excitedly dialed Benjamin Powell.

"Did you see it?"

"Well, yes, but..."

"What did I tell you? This new kind of computer is smart enough to lay the law aside and make a moral decision when circumstances merit it!"

"Not at all. Didn't you read what it said: such behavior can in some cases be in the best interest of society? It gave very good reasons. The decision was not against the law. It was sensible."

"Right." Ellen rolled her eyes. "See you later."

"I certainly hope so."

With an impish grin, the Professor of Ethics, the Vice-Chair of the Scholarly Council, reached out to press a button on her tea machine, pulled the blanket over her shoulders and cuddled up with her comm to enjoy the sensational decision word by word.



(C) Olavi Jaggo
First published: 2022-02-12
This version: 2023-10-07

The first version of this story tied for the 3rd place out of 13 in the yearly Grand Fiction Challenge competition.




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