Nilay Patel

It's a form of dispute resolution that allows two parties to resolve conflicts outside of the formal court system using a third neutral party, the arbitrator, to negotiate a settlement.

You may have never found yourself in arbitration, but you've almost certainly signed an arbitration clause in one of the many contracts and terms of service agreements that all of us have to sign all the time.

Arbitration can be much faster, cheaper, and easier than going to court, so it's become a favored way of resolving disputes between businesses.

It's also, as it turns out, how many employers and large corporations defend against lawsuits, because they can sneak an arbitration clause into the agreements for everything from cell phone service to smart washing machine features, or even the signing of your employment contract, which can protect them down the line from class action claims.

Arbitration is everywhere in our legal landscape, and you can see why an organization like the AAA would want to make it faster, cheaper, and more predictable.

So for the past several years, Bridget and her team have been developing an AI-assisted arbitration platform they call the AI Arbitrator.

And the AI Arbitrator is now available for use in very specific cases.

Construction disputes that can be resolved entirely on the basis of written documents.

And as of right now, the AI Arbitrator officially has one case on its docket.

Now, I'm obviously fascinated at how all of this might work, but you'll hear Bridget and I really dig in on what this kind of automation means, not just for arbitration, but also the bigger, more fundamental idea of seeking justice and whether or not our legal system feels fair.

Americans' trust in the judicial system reached a record low in 2024.

And you'll hear Bridget and I go back and forth on whether a system driven by AI can actually help people trust these kinds of systems more by making each party simply feel heard and by showing its work, something you don't often get from a human judge.

At the same time, AI systems are AI systems.

They're new.

They're brittle.

They hallucinate.

They get facts and dates wrong.

And it feels like there's a real danger in handing this kind of power over

to new and unpredictable technology.

So you'll hear Bridget and I discuss where she thinks the lines should be drawn and how she's trying to head off some of the big concerns about AI and where she sees this all going in the future.