[Teheran-ro] Wouldn’t an AI Judge Be Better?

We are now living in an era that has reached a singularity brought about by artificial intelligence (AI). As of 2026, AI is no longer just a "novel technology"; it has become deeply embedded as the underlying system of our daily lives and industries. In particular, this year marks a real transition into the age of the AI agent, where AI does more than wait for human commands and instead makes its own decisions and takes action.
The trend of AI moving beyond the virtual world and merging with the physical world is also clear. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in January, I was stunned watching the Atlas humanoid robot from Boston Dynamics in motion. The brain of Atlas is powered by AI from Google DeepMind. Because of this, humans no longer need to code every single movement; the Atlas AI can learn new tasks on its own through simulation.
Hyundai Motor Company plans to deploy Atlas at its Smart Factory in the United States in 2028, assigning it to the parts-sorting process. This shows that AI replacing human labor is no longer a scene confined to science fiction.
Naturally, interest is growing in which jobs will disappear because of AI. Among them, the AI judge is a particularly contentious issue. The debate continues, but the recent behavior of our Judiciary leaves room to seriously consider the idea of an AI judge. This is because rulings related to the Martial Law declared in December 2024 have been coming down one after another.
We keep seeing situations where different judges hand down radically different rulings on the same set of facts. A recent example is the so-called "Kim Keon Hee Chanel bag" case.
In the first-instance ruling last month in the case handled by the Special Prosecutor for Kim Keon-hee, the court acquitted Kim Keon Hee over the expensive Chanel bag she received in April 2022, right after the presidential election, from a figure linked to the Unification Church. The court held that there had been no specific request or favor attached. However, on the 24th, the Judiciary reached a different conclusion in the case of Geonjin Beopsa, Jeon Seong-bae. That court recognized the Chanel bag as a quid pro quo for influence.
Are we simply supposed to shrug off the fact that different courts issue different rulings on the same matter? In the Martial Law trials, we can closely follow the proceedings and immediately see the problems, but can we really be sure there were no unjust victims in past trials that were held behind closed doors, or in current cases proceeding the same way? Is it acceptable that participants in a trial must pin their hopes on the luck of which judge they are assigned?
Introducing an AI judge remains controversial, and it would obviously require deep and extensive discussion before becoming reality. Even so, I have never more strongly felt the thought that "perhaps an AI judge might actually be better" than I do these days.
ronia@fnnews.com Reporter