Committee Member’s Special Award at the 30th Annual Conference of the Association for Natural Language Processing

Professor Mihoko Sumida of the Hitosubashi Institute of Advanced Studies, Professor Keisuke Takeshita and Akira Toketsu of the Graduate School of Law, and lawyer Ryutaro Ohara (alumnus of Hitotsubashi University, Nakamura Tsunoda & Matsumoto) received the Committee Member’s Special Award at the 30th Annual Conference of the Association for Natural Language Processing.

　　

Professor Sumida and her team have been exploring the introduction of artificial intelligence technology into the judicial system in collaboration with Assistant Professor Hiroaki Yamada and Professor Takenobu Tokunaga of the Tokyo Institute of Technology’s School of Computing, with the aim of “exploring a Justice adequate for Society 5.0” *.

As part of this process, with the cooperation of LIC Corporation, which provides the precedent database “Hanrei Hisho”, and a total of 41 undergraduates and Law School students who have taken the Bar Exam and qualified legal professionals, a “Japanese Tort- case Dataset” consisting of 3477 judgment documents (7978 tort cases) has been constructed and a “Dispute Resolution Outcome Prediction Model” has been developed to output the success or failure of a tort and its rationales.

The results of the research were presented at the 30th Annual Conference of the Association for Language Processing**, which was held as a hybrid in Kobe, Japan, 11-15 March 2024, and received the Committee Member’s Special Award from the Association for the ‘usefulness’ and ‘future potential’ of the research.

The Committee Member’s Special Award is awarded to research achievements that shine from such perspectives as ‘novelty’, ‘usefulness’ and ‘future potential’, which are set independently by the judges, and around 4% of the papers presented are selected for the award.

https://www.anlp.jp/nlp2024/award.html#committee

　　

• Recipients comments

Mihoko Sumida (Professor, Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study)
“As a social science researcher, I am deeply moved by the recognition of the ‘usefulness’ and ‘potential’ of our research, which has been carried out in an exploratory manner. This is very encouraging for our team and we will continue to make every effort to return timely research results to society.”

Hiroaki Yamada (Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science, School of Computing, Tokyo Institute of Technology)
“I think it is a great achievement that our efforts to date have received a certain level of recognition from the natural language processing community. I would like to express my sincere gratitude for this achievement, which was made possible by our interdisciplinary research in collaboration with you all.”

　　

* This research has been funded by Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) Strategic Creative Research Initiative RISTEX, “Legal System and Artificial Intelligence” (JPMJRX19H3, Jan 2020 – Dec 2023). It has been conducted in collaboration with Dr. Yamada’s project, ‘Explainable Model for Legal Judgement Prediction’, funded by JST Strategic Creative Research Promotion Programme ACT-X (JPM-JAX20AM).

** The Association for Natural Language Processing was established on 1 April 1994 as a forum for the presentation of research results in language processing in Japan and for international research exchange. Through the publication of the journal “Natural Language Processing” four times a year in principle and the holding of the annual conference of the Association of the Natural Language Processing. The Association aims to develop the discipline, develop and disseminate applied technology, and foster communication and human resources among researchers, engineers and users on an international level. (From the HP of the Association for Natural Language Processing)