"Free, AI-powered legal advice should be good news for workers. Instead, it is proving to be a tragedy of the commons. For workers with genuine grievances, the surge in demand means longer waits for justice. For employers, it means bigger legal bills to respond to claims, both well-founded or fantastical. In the age of AI, a system intended to provide access to justice suffers from, if anything, too much access."
That’s what a “tragedy of the commons” is though. The degradation of a shared resource (state capacity) by people acting in their own best interest.
The state using AI “to make bureaucracy instantaneous” is a tragedy of the commons. The experience is degraded because before you trusted your grievance will be heard, but now you might get auto rejected by an AI. It’s pretty much the definition of the phrase.
I don’t equate “the commons” to “the state”. Part of the point of the commons was that it was unregulated and shared. The state is one solution to the tragedy of the commons, but not the only one.
I don’t view “the state” as a commons. It’s a separate beast. The commons is explicitly owned by all, and I think that’s a faulty model for the state.
And to your objection - you’re just objecting to the bad implementation. Obviously we should build it good, not bad - just like every policy. And just like every state action we at least know will not get the perfect version. There is no axiomatic necessity to any of the concerns you raised, and I feel they are obvious points that need to be considered in the design.
But if you have other policy ideas do share! As I said I don’t see another path, realistically speaking.
Because modern LLMs are capable. Even if they make a mistake by appealing you can clear it up and convince it why there actually is an argument than it being able to be resolved by just reading the contract for example.
There's still inequality in someone else receiving a false positive approval from the AI while another gets rejected. Equal treatment and stochastic systems don't mix.
The law is already a stochastic system and it's designed to eventually receive a result that is correct most of the time. It doesn't try to be 100% correct. Not having it be 100% correct does not cause society to fall over.
Exactly. Not to mention that there is no reason a well-calibrated AI system cannot be Pareto-optimal over the human-only system.
For example if you are interested in bias, an AI system can be backtested; new policies applied on old data, and whatever metric for inequality you are investigating can be measured.
The state needs to use AI to make bureaucracy instantaneous
The stuff of many sci fi tropes - it seldom ends well.
A bit OT but there's a character in a couple of frank Herbert books - Jorj X Mckie saboteur extraordinary in the Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab). BuSab is a government agency responsible for conducting dirty tricks "in lieu of red tape" to help slow down and regulate the vast galaxy-spanning bureaucracy.
In principle you can exclude someone from being able to file a plausible complaint after they've been wronged, but if we take it as a premise that we don't want to do that then it's not very excludable anymore.
The basics likely get you there, I don’t think the modern bureaucratic state is a particularly high bar to clear:
Measure your baseline, pick good metrics, build human-vetted ground truth, then work through false positives/negatives starting with the most egregious/surprising. Start in shadow mode until the system is clearly better, however you must define that to ensure trust/buy-in.
Any appeals process naturally falls victim to the original problem, and so we're back where we started. And if you don't have an appeals process, how can you flag if something is wrong?
You seem to be arguing that all processes are equivalent. This seems like an overgeneralization.
For example supporting you spend 10x and hire a bunch of the smartest people around to run this process. Do you agree that you could decrease wait times?
You can think of this in terms of labor productivity if it’s helpful. It’s not a fixed value. The hypothesis is that if AI can increase the labor productivity of claimants, it can increase the productivity of the administrators too.
I see what you mean, but whilst there aren't really repercussions if the claim is incorrect; but if a claim is incorrectly rejected or accepted, that is a significant problem.
This is supposed to be a joke but that's pretty obviously what would happen if you actually tried to do this.
You apply for your permit or whatever and the AI instantly denies you, so you start over and pull the lever again and this time the AI's random number generator comes up 777 and you get your permit.
Then the house can tune this for either reducing red tape (e.g. pulls are free) or favoring the rich (you have to pay a fee for each attempt so only the poor have to take the L once they run out of pocket money).
I am not surprised. Contrary to popular belief, free markets nor capitalism do not resolve tragedy of the commons; they just hide it in (negative) externalities.
The biggest example is probably the CO2 emissions and global warming, but also the social costs of economic outcasting - making people jobless, homeless or otherwise stressed due to poor distribution of resources.
TFA ends on this note though, which seems pro-labor:
> But it would present employers with a different problem. If AI fulfils its promise, it could before long give every worker the equivalent of a top-flight lawyer in their pocket, able to file precisely constructed cases against their bosses at will. A deluge of slop claims could give way to a wave of winning ones. Labour said its act would shift power from employers to workers. With AI, power will move faster and further than the politicians imagined.
Comments
Tellingly, the legal tendency The Economist finds alarming involves workers asserting their rights.
From the article:
"Free, AI-powered legal advice should be good news for workers. Instead, it is proving to be a tragedy of the commons. For workers with genuine grievances, the surge in demand means longer waits for justice. For employers, it means bigger legal bills to respond to claims, both well-founded or fantastical. In the age of AI, a system intended to provide access to justice suffers from, if anything, too much access."
I found this article quite myopic.
This is not a “tragedy of the commons”, it’s just a deficit of state capacity.
The state needs to use AI to make bureaucracy instantaneous. That’s the only option, unless you ban AI for this kind of thing (not gonna happen).
That’s what a “tragedy of the commons” is though. The degradation of a shared resource (state capacity) by people acting in their own best interest.
The state using AI “to make bureaucracy instantaneous” is a tragedy of the commons. The experience is degraded because before you trusted your grievance will be heard, but now you might get auto rejected by an AI. It’s pretty much the definition of the phrase.
I don’t equate “the commons” to “the state”. Part of the point of the commons was that it was unregulated and shared. The state is one solution to the tragedy of the commons, but not the only one.
I don’t view “the state” as a commons. It’s a separate beast. The commons is explicitly owned by all, and I think that’s a faulty model for the state.
And to your objection - you’re just objecting to the bad implementation. Obviously we should build it good, not bad - just like every policy. And just like every state action we at least know will not get the perfect version. There is no axiomatic necessity to any of the concerns you raised, and I feel they are obvious points that need to be considered in the design.
But if you have other policy ideas do share! As I said I don’t see another path, realistically speaking.
If you get rejected you can appeal the part the AI rejected the same as if you get rejected by a judge.
The loser of every suit will simply always appeal the AI decision, thus requiring a human decision anyway.
AI would review the appeal so that only things which require human decision receive human attention.
And we trust the AI to reliably decide what requires human attention because...?
Because modern LLMs are capable. Even if they make a mistake by appealing you can clear it up and convince it why there actually is an argument than it being able to be resolved by just reading the contract for example.
There's still inequality in someone else receiving a false positive approval from the AI while another gets rejected. Equal treatment and stochastic systems don't mix.
The law is already a stochastic system and it's designed to eventually receive a result that is correct most of the time. It doesn't try to be 100% correct. Not having it be 100% correct does not cause society to fall over.
Exactly. Not to mention that there is no reason a well-calibrated AI system cannot be Pareto-optimal over the human-only system.
For example if you are interested in bias, an AI system can be backtested; new policies applied on old data, and whatever metric for inequality you are investigating can be measured.
You can’t backtest a human.
The stuff of many sci fi tropes - it seldom ends well.
A bit OT but there's a character in a couple of frank Herbert books - Jorj X Mckie saboteur extraordinary in the Bureau of Sabotage (BuSab). BuSab is a government agency responsible for conducting dirty tricks "in lieu of red tape" to help slow down and regulate the vast galaxy-spanning bureaucracy.
State capacity is a common good though, and AI makes abusing it much easier.
It's excludable, so I don't think it can be considered a common good.
In principle you can exclude someone from being able to file a plausible complaint after they've been wronged, but if we take it as a premise that we don't want to do that then it's not very excludable anymore.
Or reform your legal system? I mean it's clearly not working very well, time for a change.
So how do you propose to deal with the inevitable errors using AI would cause?
The basics likely get you there, I don’t think the modern bureaucratic state is a particularly high bar to clear:
Measure your baseline, pick good metrics, build human-vetted ground truth, then work through false positives/negatives starting with the most egregious/surprising. Start in shadow mode until the system is clearly better, however you must define that to ensure trust/buy-in.
Any appeals process naturally falls victim to the original problem, and so we're back where we started. And if you don't have an appeals process, how can you flag if something is wrong?
You seem to be arguing that all processes are equivalent. This seems like an overgeneralization.
For example supporting you spend 10x and hire a bunch of the smartest people around to run this process. Do you agree that you could decrease wait times?
You can think of this in terms of labor productivity if it’s helpful. It’s not a fixed value. The hypothesis is that if AI can increase the labor productivity of claimants, it can increase the productivity of the administrators too.
I see what you mean, but whilst there aren't really repercussions if the claim is incorrect; but if a claim is incorrectly rejected or accepted, that is a significant problem.
You cant fool me. It's AI all the way down.
This is supposed to be a joke but that's pretty obviously what would happen if you actually tried to do this.
You apply for your permit or whatever and the AI instantly denies you, so you start over and pull the lever again and this time the AI's random number generator comes up 777 and you get your permit.
Then the house can tune this for either reducing red tape (e.g. pulls are free) or favoring the rich (you have to pay a fee for each attempt so only the poor have to take the L once they run out of pocket money).
Yes.
There ought to be a lot more small claims court cases in the US, just to keep businesses honest.
The original Tragedy of the commons was largely made up
https://www.hamptonthink.org/read/the-myth-of-the-tragedy-of...
I am not surprised. Contrary to popular belief, free markets nor capitalism do not resolve tragedy of the commons; they just hide it in (negative) externalities.
The biggest example is probably the CO2 emissions and global warming, but also the social costs of economic outcasting - making people jobless, homeless or otherwise stressed due to poor distribution of resources.
TFA ends on this note though, which seems pro-labor:
> But it would present employers with a different problem. If AI fulfils its promise, it could before long give every worker the equivalent of a top-flight lawyer in their pocket, able to file precisely constructed cases against their bosses at will. A deluge of slop claims could give way to a wave of winning ones. Labour said its act would shift power from employers to workers. With AI, power will move faster and further than the politicians imagined.
Anthropic is a sponsor of The Economist. So maybe that influences their retoric somewhat.