CONCEPT
Judgment vs. Calculation
The distinction, sharpest in Ronald Dworkin's legal philosophy but running through the whole of [YOU] on AI, between two kinds of acts that produce answers: the machine's calculation, which optimizes a function over data, and the judge's judgment, which interprets a practice, commits to a principle, and is answerable for the commitment.
The age of artificial intelligence has made one philosophical distinction urgently practical: the difference between a decision and a computation. A computation takes inputs, applies a procedure, and produces an output. The procedure is fixed in advance; given the same inputs, the same output follows necessarily. A judgment is different in structure. It involves constructing an interpretation of the situation at hand, committing to a principle, and being answerable for the commitment in a way that admits of argument and correction. Dworkin developed this distinction with maximum clarity in the legal context, arguing that hard cases require judges to find the interpretation of the community's legal practice that best fits the settled decisions and shows them in their best moral light—an act of constructive interpretation that no procedure can substitute for. But the distinction extends beyond law to every domain where
Keep reading with YOU ON AI
Unlock the full book, 10,000+ field-guide entries, and a 1000+ thinker library. If you have a book code, register now — it takes a minute.