Central Idea

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gained worldwide attention, and many mature democracies are using it for better legislative procedures. In India, AI can be used to assist parliamentarians in preparing responses for legislators, enhancing research quality, and obtaining information about any Bill, legislative drafting, amendments, interventions, and more. However, before AI can work in India, there is a need to codify the country’s laws, which are opaque, complex, and face a huge translation gap between law-making, law-implementing, and law-interpreting organizations.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

• AI is a constellation of technologies that enable machines to act with higher levels of intelligence and emulate the human capabilities of sense, comprehend and act.
• The natural language processing and inference engines can enable AI systems to analyze and understand the information collected.
• An AI system can also take action through technologies such as expert systems and inference engines or undertake actions in the physical world.
• These human-like capabilities are augmented by the ability to learn from experience and keep adapting over time.
• AI systems are finding ever-wider application to supplement these capabilities across various sectors

Need to Codify Laws

• Current laws are complex and opaque: Current laws in India pose many challenges, such as their complexity, opaqueness, and lack of a single source of truth.
• The India Code portal does not provide complete information: The India Code portal is not enough to provide complete information about parent Acts, subordinate legislation, and amendment notifications.
• AI can be used to provide comprehensive information: There is a need to make laws machine-consumable with a central law engine, which can be a single source of truth for all acts, subordinate pieces of legislation, gazettes, compliances, and regulations. AI can use this engine to provide information on applicable acts and compliances for entrepreneurs or recommend eligible welfare schemes for citizens.

Assisting Legislators

• Potential of AI for legislators: AI can help Indian parliamentarians manage constituencies with a huge population by analysing citizens’ grievances and social media responses, flagging issues that need immediate attention and assisting in seeking citizen inputs for public consultation of laws and preparing a manifesto.
• AI-powered assistance: Many Parliaments worldwide are now experimenting with AI-powered assistants.
• For instance:
• Netherlands’s Speech2Write system: The Speech2Write system in the Netherlands House of Representatives, which converts voice to text and translates voice into written reports.
• AI tools Japan: Japan’s AI tool assists in preparing responses for its legislature and helps in selecting relevant highlights in parliamentary debates.
• Brazil: Brazil has developed an AI system called Ulysses, which supports transparency and citizen participation.
• NeVA portal India: India is also innovating and working towards making parliamentary activities digital through the ‘One Nation, One Application’ and the National e-Vidhan (NeVA) portal.

Simulating Potential Effects of Laws

• Dataset modelling: AI can simulate the potential effects of laws by modelling various datasets such as the Census, data on household consumption, taxpayers, beneficiaries from various schemes, and public infrastructure.
• Flag outdated laws: In that case, AI can uncover potential outcomes of a policy and flag outdated laws that require amendment.
• For example: During the COVID-19 pandemic, ‘The Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897’ failed to address the situation when the virus overwhelmed the country. Several provisions in the Indian Penal Code (IPC) are controversial and redundant, such as Article 309 (attempted suicide) of the IPC continues to be a criminal offense. Many criminal legislation pieces enacted more than 100 years ago are of hardly any use today.

Conclusion

• The COVID-19 pandemic has given a strong thrust to the Digital India initiative, and a digitization of services needs to be kept up in the field of law, policy-making, and parliamentary activities, harnessing the power of AI. However, the use of AI must be encouraged in an open, transparent, and citizen-friendly manner, as AI is a means to an end, not an end in itself. Therefore, it is necessary to address the current challenges faced by India’s laws before AI can be effectively used to assist parliamentarians in their legislative duties.

Mains Question

Q. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has gained worldwide attention, and many mature democracies are using it for better legislative procedures. In this light evaluate the potential of AI in assisting Indian parliamentarians.

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