Nilay Patel

But you can't actually hold it accountable.

And that to me feels like the biggest gap in all of these automated decision systems that no one wants to account for because the efficiency gain is so high.

My wife, as it happens, is a divorce lawyer, and I do think an agent of her just talking her clients through the decisions that were made a long time ago over and over again would actually be very helpful for her in many ways, because that seems like a lot of her job.

I understand what you're saying there.

You said this thing to me the first time we met that, again, I've just been thinking about ever since.

You said that several years from now, 10, 20, 30 years from now, we would think it was crazy that we ever had human judges making as many decisions as we do today.

You've got one case in the system.

Is that borne out?

Do you feel that as strongly as you did when we first talked a few months ago?

One thing I've been thinking about throughout this conversation is like who gets access to these systems?

Who gets to make it feel fair?

Where does the trust in the agency come from?

A pervasive criticism of arbitration broadly is, well, it's a service, right?

It's fee for service even though the AAA is a nonprofit.

There are other –

I would say more rapacious providers of arbitration services that do run them as for-profit businesses.

You have clients.

The clients have to be happy with the outcomes.

And that does feel like it changes how people perceive the whole process.

As you automate that, right, and you have big clients who are paying for lots and lots of arbitration, and they can see that the automated system is either helping them or hurting them, should that affect how people think about the fairness of the system overall?