The tragedy of the commons, AI edition
61–70 of 122 posts
Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition
#62Maybe 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)
what about a "rich loser pays" rule? if the losing side can afford to pay the other sides fees without getting close to bankruptcy they have to do it, otherwise it reverts to each side paying for itself.
that would encourage lawsuits against the state and big corporations, and make it less worth it to sue small businesses or your own employees. thats common sense because bigger more powerful organizations tend to be more evil (as in breaking the law because they can afford to pay fines) and money is a good measure of power in capitalism.
Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
That deters honest complaints from poor plaintiffs. The Economist may approve, but justice shouldn't depend on the relative finances and/or power and status of the opposing parties. Of course it does, often. But that's a pathology, not a feature to be proud of. It's true that some complaints are irrational, vindictive, or vexatious, but the system seems quite good at identifying those already.
> That deters honest complaints from poor plaintiffs. If the complaint has a high probability of success then it has a low probability of making the plaintiff pay costs. If it has a low probability of success then isn't that what we're trying to deter?
I think there's a distinction to be made between "a nuisance complaint" and "a legitimate complaint whose presumptive odds of succeeding in court are less than guaranteed"
Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
As with most such things, though, what is needed are escalating penalties. If you're a Joe Schmo who files a complaint that turns out to be invalid, no penalty for you. If you're a rich jerk who files a bunch of such complaints, a few million maybe. If you're a giant company that is using the legal system to push people around, $50 billion.
Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition
#65Even the “pre-case” legal stuff is out of control. In my Australian organisation we’ve noticed a deluge of what I can only call “privacy demands” that talk the talk… but have the jurisdiction or subject legislation wrong. But AI told them they could demand these things (even if it would be illegal for us to comply! Think KYC stuff.) and they don’t have the skill to criticise the AI or know when to stop.
Yep, and the cost is borne by the receiver of the letter. The person sending shitty LawyerGPT messages will just keep doing it until there’s consequences, but there aren’t any.
Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That deters honest complaints from poor plaintiffs. If the complaint has a high probability of success then it has a low probability of making the plaintiff pay costs. If it has a low probability of success then isn't that what we're trying to deter?
I think there's a distinction to be made between "a nuisance complaint" and "a legitimate complaint whose presumptive odds of succeeding in court are less than guaranteed"
When the odds of success are 99% but not 100%, that's not going to deter a lot of people.
When the odds of success are 50/50, in this context that's a nuisance complaint because making it "free" to turn all of those into real adjudications would flood the system with exactly the cases where the outcome is unclear which are correspondingly the hardest to efficiently resolve. The only practical way to address that is to clarify and simplify the rules to begin with so that the outcomes are predictable rather than ambiguous, and then we're back to not really deterring anyone because it's obvious who is going to win.
And in the meantime plugging up the system with unlimited questionable complaints isn't very prudent.
Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition
#67Tellingly, the legal tendency The Economist finds alarming involves workers asserting their rights.
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.
Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don’t see how that helps? A lawyer isn’t going to sign on to take liability risk unless they spend quite a lot of time analyzing the AI’s outputs for possible blunders? So it structurally can’t cost significantly less.
Lawyers normally don't have any liability risks, no? And reputational risks are very limited, a lawyer can always point to a judge, to the other lawyer, to circumstances, and away from their own (or the AI's output) blunder.
Layer can be disbarred. And judges do not accept "ai did it therefore I, the layer am not responsible for the false claim" as an excuse from layers.
Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition
#69Earlier 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).
Yes.
There ought to be a lot more small claims court cases in the US, just to keep businesses honest.
Re: The tragedy of the commons, AI edition
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
That deters honest complaints from poor plaintiffs. The Economist may approve, but justice shouldn't depend on the relative finances and/or power and status of the opposing parties. Of course it does, often. But that's a pathology, not a feature to be proud of. It's true that some complaints are irrational, vindictive, or vexatious, but the system seems quite good at identifying those already.
> That deters honest complaints from poor plaintiffs. If the complaint has a high probability of success then it has a low probability of making the plaintiff pay costs. If it has a low probability of success then isn't that what we're trying to deter?
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