Artificial Intelligence In Public Decision-making: Guidelines, Jurisprudence And Open Questions

Like many of us, Canadian public authorities and courts are increasingly using artificial intelligence (“AI”) tools in their day-to-day work. While AI tools may provide welcome administrative efficiencies, their use by decision-makers raises important concerns. The most pressing are (i) ensuring that the decision-makers—and not the AI tools—are grappling with the substance of, and ultimately deciding, the matters before them; and (ii) ensuring that the resulting decisions are procedurally fair to those they affect.

Many Canadian decision-makers are, laudably, working through these concerns in public. This article summarizes the current, public guidelines issued by Canadian courts and governments on the use of AI in administrative and judicial decision-making. It then identifies a number of lessons from the evolving case law on the use of AI and raises some important open questions.