Robot Lawyers Solve Problems

Ben22 writes "The Register is reporting that soon new 'Robot Agents' will handle all of our online disputes. The new system is called e-Dispute and could eventually be used on services such as eBay or even all online stores. Perhaps it will help usher in an age of simplified, safe online shopping. Someday, Congress and the Senate might even use programs such as this to resolve conflicting bills. The possibilities are endless."

Future business opp: litigation robot optimization

[Mostly a lurker]

If litigation in the future is going to be resolved largely based on case evaluations by automated systems, this raises some interesting issues:

• Would we pass various scenarios through the system, prior to initiating litigation, to assess whether the lawsuit makes financial sense and to choose the most promising approach?
• It would appear that, if the proposed settlement to be chosen by the litigation system was completely predictable, this would be a severe weakness. It would make "gaming the system" even easier than today. Thus, as with the best poker robots, some level of randomisation would appear necessary to keep the "players" honest. On the other hand, many caught up in the legal system are under the illusion that outcomes should conform to something called "justice". While these participants may be delusional, their fantasies need to be catered to, and any form of randomisation in the results will be regarded as "unjust".
• I find the possibility of duelling litigation robots a fascinating prospect. I can imagine a whole new specialty of "litigation robot optimization" where engineers, knowledgable about the internal operation of competing robots, find creative ways to enhance the results of their own robot.

I certainly have no fear that such developments will lead to a worse legal system. The current system (in almost all countries, though there are a few honourable exceptions) is so hopelessly flawed that changes, while they may not help, will not cause any major new problems. Litigation in the US, and many other countries, is just a way to generate money for the legal profession. Adding a new legal specialty to get some of the spoils seems fine, especially as this one sounds like fun.

Very Very Scray

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one frightened by this sort of thing? Arbitration is bad enough in it's normal state. Now take out the inteligent neutral party and replace it with this? Shall the more intelligent, or the better speaker win. The party who can better argue their case. If someone doesn't understand it and gives an emotional case lacking facts, as many people will, should they lose even though they may be in the right? On another front ebay customer service is already non existent. Imagine if you could no longer talk to humans but always have to go through these automated money saving systems. Very frightening!

Oh.. And what does this have to do with hardware?

First, they need a new name. Then new technology.

[Animats]

The first thing the company behind this, Tiga Technologies, needs is a new name. There's already a commercial product called e-Dispute. [anachron.com] This is a system for resolving billing disputes between companies. It's useful where there are many invoices with multiple line items to be matched up with purchase orders, shipping and receiving information, rejects and returns. It lets both sides see all the documents involved. As issues are resolved, everybody sees the same markup and the numbers are recomputed. It's not AI, it's just good accounting.

Tiga's new thing may be vaporware. Their website [tiga-technologies.com] is suspicious. The graphics all look like generic clip art. The e-Dispute application system diagram [tiga-technologies.com] appears to be a generic drawing of a Citrix Metaframe system with a bit of markup. An old Metaframe system, too. Note the terminals marked "OS/2 PCs" and "Legacy DOS PCs", and the data links marked "ISDN" and "Dial-Up". In fact, here's the image it was apparently copied from. [medinotes.com] Note that Tiga seems to have removed the Citrix name and the "tm" after Metaframe, along with other editing.