> People just need to get past the fact that a "cold-hearted," emotionless computer is in the judge's chair because that's EXACTLY what we want. That is not wh

> People just need to get past the fact that a "cold-hearted," emotionless computer is in the judge's chair because that's EXACTLY what we want. That is not what I want. You should not want that either. If our current laws were implemented strictly and impartially, without reference to mitigating circumstances, the results would often be unfair, unjust, and morally wrong. An emotionless computer would not consider any mitigating or unusual circumstances unless it was programmed to do so in advance -- but not all of the the circumstances that might come up in court are going to be obvious to the programmers. Even foreseeable mitigating circumstances would be very difficult to program correctly, e.g. the difference between valid self-defense and manslaughter depends heavily on the state of mind of the defendant. Good luck teaching a computer how to deal with such a problem in a fair and just way, unless you can manage to develop the first artificial general intelligence.