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The tragedy of the commons, AI edition

economist.com

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Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition

#11

Post by jay_kyburz »

dozerly wrote: post #3

Maybe we need a better-scaling legal system that does not take years to resolve simple disputes. I am not convinced AI can replace lawyers, but more people having access to the law without extremely costly fees does sound good to me.

The answer is in the article. There needs to be a financial mechanism to deter nuance complaints. A small penalty for lodging a complaint and losing.

This fee should help pay for the courts and reimburse and employer for time spent defending itself.

(With the judge / magistrate able to wave the fee on compassionate grounds)

Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition

#12

Post by TeMPOraL »

jmyeet wrote: post #9

So I have to wonder if this article written about clogging up employment courts with AI-generated cases is itself generated because the premise (in the title and the article) refers to the "tragedy of the commons", which was debunked almost 20 years ago. For a bit of history, the term was the title of a 1968 essay [1] based in part on ideas that originated earlier. It becamse popular as a driver for privatization of…

It's the first time I hear something like this; if that's true, then this must be one major case of meaning shift, because since forever I've known and used and seen used this term to refer to the flaws of privatization. The solution to tragedy of the commons is literally a central authority. It's, like, the opposite of "driver of privatization".

Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition

#13

Post by ttoinou »

jmyeet wrote: post #9

So I have to wonder if this article written about clogging up employment courts with AI-generated cases is itself generated because the premise (in the title and the article) refers to the "tragedy of the commons", which was debunked almost 20 years ago. For a bit of history, the term was the title of a 1968 essay [1] based in part on ideas that originated earlier. It becamse popular as a driver for privatization of…

You can have a tragedy or not, Ostrom didn’t show it’s always well managed by the public. One can say ‘tragedy of the commons’ while still knowing about solutions where it’s not a tragedy anymore

Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition

#14

Post by newyankee »

dozerly wrote: post #3

Maybe we need a better-scaling legal system that does not take years to resolve simple disputes. I am not convinced AI can replace lawyers, but more people having access to the law without extremely costly fees does sound good to me.

With frontier models, I have found so many self contradicting points in Indian tax law that I would rather welcome a good AI helping to reduce discretionary powers of officers via highly subjective interpretations. This power asymmetry is basically the driver for a lot of developing world corruption.

Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition

#15

Post by zdragnar »

theptip wrote: post #10
Gander5739 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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).

State capacity is a common good though, and AI makes abusing it much easier.

Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition

#17

Post by teddyh »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #11
dozerly wrote: post #3

Maybe we need a better-scaling legal system that does not take years to resolve simple disputes. I am not convinced AI can replace lawyers, but more people having access to the law without extremely costly fees does sound good to me.

The answer is in the article. There needs to be a financial mechanism to deter nuance complaints. A small penalty for lodging a complaint and losing. This fee should help pay for the courts and reimburse and employer for time spent defending itself. (With the judge / magistrate able to wave the fee on compassionate grounds)

  s/nuance/nuisance/

Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition

#18

Post by simonjgreen »

jay_kyburz wrote: post #11
dozerly wrote: post #3

Maybe we need a better-scaling legal system that does not take years to resolve simple disputes. I am not convinced AI can replace lawyers, but more people having access to the law without extremely costly fees does sound good to me.

The answer is in the article. There needs to be a financial mechanism to deter nuance complaints. A small penalty for lodging a complaint and losing. This fee should help pay for the courts and reimburse and employer for time spent defending itself. (With the judge / magistrate able to wave the fee on compassionate grounds)

This is a thing, and in the context of the article too. In UK, if an employment tribunal finds you’ve wasted the tribunals time they can and do order costs paid for both the tribunal and other party. Odd they don’t mention it.

Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition

#19

Post by Gander5739 »

theptip wrote: post #10
Gander5739 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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).

So how do you propose to deal with the inevitable errors using AI would cause?
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