On May 22, the annual “IQ Forum” took place at the Public Library of Marijampolė named after Petras Kriaučiūnas. This traditional event is organized for the business community of Sūduva by the magazine “IQ” and the Marijampolė branch of the Kaunas Chamber of Commerce, Industry, and Crafts. Representatives from businesses and non-governmental organizations, as well as the mayor and vice mayor of Marijampolė, and several members of the Lithuanian Parliament and Marijampolė Municipal Council attended this year’s forum titled “Sūduva 2024: How Can Regions Catch the Wave of Success?”

Among the honourable speakers at the event was Monika Šukytė, a PhD student at the Law Institute of the Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences (hereinafter - LI LCSS) and a junior researcher in the project “Artificial Intelligence in Courts: Challenges and Opportunities” (TeismAI). In her presentation “Artificial Intelligence in State Institutions: Towards Technology Adoption”, she discussed how artificial intelligence is used in police and the judiciary, and also the challenges this technology poses in the context of human rights.

In the first part of her presentation, drawing on the results of the recently completed LI LCSS project “Government Use of Facial Recognition Technologies: Legal Challenges and Solutions” (Faces-AI) and her doctoral research, M. Šukytė spoke about the use of facial recognition technology (hereinafter - FRT) in police activities. She explained the operating principles of these technologies and provided practical examples of their use in law enforcement agencies in Lithuania and other countries. At the end of her presentation, she also highlighted the challenges that the use of FRT poses to human rights, such as the right to data protection and privacy.

The second part of her presentation was based on preliminary results from the project “Artificial Intelligence in Courts: Challenges and Opportunities” (TeismAI), funded by the Lithuanian Research Council. This part focused on the use of artificial intelligence tools in the judiciary. “Generative artificial intelligence, such as the chatbot ChatGPT,” M. Šukytė explained to the forum participants, “has already been applied in preparing procedural documents and deepfakes have already reached courts as evidence.” She concluded her presentation by discussing the challenges arising in the context of human rights and judicial values, including issues of algorithmic bias, the right to an impartial trial, and the question of accountability for errors made by algorithms.

The slides from Monika Šukytė’s presentation can be accessed here.