Legal decision support systems in Cuba: some background and notes for future projects

Abstract

Legal Decision Support Systems in Cuba as yet show few results, but now a resurgence of this field is possible. This new opportunity is due to the worldwide boom in AI & Law research. In addition to the current efforts towards the digital transformation of society. This paper aims to review some antecedents, and discuss some proposals for the evolution of this domain in the country. We first identify the strengths and constraints of some previous contributions and outline the current state of this topic in Cuba. Then, we propose some ideas for future projects, considering the main international approaches and state of the art in Artificial Intelligence, Soft Computing, Big data, and Open Data. We argue the importance of creating different forms of legal knowledge representation, the development of specific algorithms based on the most appropriate techniques for each task, updating of jurists’ and computer specialists’ curricula, and the legislative process improvement. Besides, we advocate the feasibility of creating recommendations in natural language, and we exemplify their types and uses. Finally, the paper calls attention to the protection of personal data and the importance of jurists to participate in the development of systems and to understand how they operate.