印度法院淹没在文书之中 —— 甚至记录证人证词都会造成瓶颈。“整天写、写、写，”喀拉拉邦法官 Suresh Babu 在非营利组织 Adalat AI 的年度报告中说。这种低效影响重大：2024 年，印度近四分之三的在押人员因等待审理而未被定罪。
India’s courts are drowning in documents — and even recording witness testimony can create a bottleneck. “It’s writing, writing, writing, all day,” says Kerala judge Suresh Babu in the annual report of nonprofit Adalat AI. That type of inefficiency matters: In 2024, nearly three-in-four people in prison in India were being held without a conviction as they awaited processing.
Adalat AI 开发了基于印度法律体系训练的语音识别软件，以及用于管理案件和法庭文书的 AI 工具。联合创始人兼首席执行官 Utkarsh Saxena 称其团队为法院系统的 “水管工”，负责疏通和修复管道。
Adalat AI builds speech-recognition software trained on India’s legal system, alongside AI tools to manage cases and court documents. Co-founder and CEO Utkarsh Saxena calls his team the “plumbers of the court system”, the ones who fix and unclog the pipes.
例如，当证人回答问题时，法官现在可以口述由 Adalat 记录的内容。然后，双方在屏幕上核对文本后再继续进行。这些记录随后作为法庭证人证词的正式记录提交。“我们不是在自动化决策，而是在自动化行政流程，把时间还给法官，让他们做真正重要的事，” Saxena 说。
For example, when a witness answers a question, the judge can now dictate what should be recorded by Adalat. Then, both parties check the text on screen before moving on. Those transcripts are then submitted as the court’s official record of the testimony. “We aren’t automating decision-making, we’re automating the administrative processes to give judges back time to do the things that actually matter,” Saxena says.
考验在于更快的文书处理能否缩短案件审理周期。在内部研究中，Adalat 发现使用其工具的法院在审理证人数量和发布命令数量上有显著提升，这些工具已覆盖 11 个邦的 6000 多个法庭。目前正在与研究中心 J-PAL 进行随机评估。
The test will be whether faster paperwork leads to shorter cases. In internal studies, Adalat has seen major improvements in the number of witnesses heard and orders issued at courts that use its tools, which have reached more than 6,000 courtrooms across 11 states. A randomized evaluation with research center J-PAL is currently underway.
一些辖区现在强制要求使用 Adalat AI 技术记录证人证词。类似的推动也在新加坡发生，当地法院于 2023 年 12 月引入了 AI 驱动的转录工具。—— Zoë Schiffer
Some jurisdictions now mandate the use of Adalat AI technology for recording witness testimony. A similar push is happening in Singapore, where courts introduced AI-powered transcription tools in December 2023. — Zoë Schiffer