Digital transitional justice: unpacking the black box

Artificial intelligence (AI) has transformed public policy and governance with machine learning (ML) facilitating decision-making in security, criminal justice, and surveillance. AI has also become increasingly opaque and autonomous, as recent technological advancements have led to the development of AI-enabled tools that require almost no human input. However, despite these developments, transitional justice practice and scholarship has not yet engaged in a sustained manner with the question of what these developments mean for the field. This contribution will highlight how transitional justice, with its focus on dealing with the legacy of large-scale and systemic atrocity, is faced with dilemmas presented by new digital justice spaces, and it will also explore how these dilemmas will grow as digital spaces continue to expand. By drawing upon a spatial framework, this chapter will explore these emergent digital spaces and unpack AI’s impact on transitional justice practice and research.