Algorithmic Litigation Financing
Legalist.com is a litigation finance company that uses algorithmic analysis to determine the likelihood of a lawsuit’s successful outcome for the plaintiff, allowing investors to fund the suit. There are times when a plaintiff doesn’t have the financial resources to maintain a lengthy and expensive lawsuit against a large corporation. In these cases, litigation financing can provide them with the money they need. If they win, the plaintiff must pay a percentage of their award to the investors. This is an interesting application of Artificial Intelligence (AI), and it has a controversial twist. Its founders are Eva Shang and Christian Haigh. Shang is a recipient of the Thiel Fellowship. Peter Thiel was discovered to be a financial backer of professional wrestler Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against Gawker, an effort on Thiel’s part that was motivated by his disapproval of Gawker’s reporting on his sexual preferences. Many have postulated that in this startup we are witnessing the birth of an ill-conceived business that will allow the rich and powerful to distort the US judicial system, while reaping rich rewards in the process.
Legalist employs algorithms to process historical lawsuit data, analyzing information on the judge, court and lawyers involved. Litigation financing is a well-established business, but it’s done traditionally by experienced litigators who analyze individual cases. Legalist uses data from 15 million cases in 10 states in its muscular approach to case evaluation. Some of the negative interpretations of this kind of power are that it will increase the number of lawsuits in our already litigious society, bring unmeritorious suits to trial and steer lawsuit outcomes according to the will of investors instead of litigants.
These objections indicate a development in humanity which is driven by the intersection of money, law, computing and normalized irrational acts like revenge.
The internet and its communities have created environments unique to this era. Trends develop and spread rapidly, while established forms and rituals take on new shapes and sounds. Areas of human endeavor that had formerly appeared separate are now undeniably intertwined. Algorithmic processing has intensified and expanded errors, effects and results. Quantitative methods are transforming social norms and values, with market values penetrating morals and ethics more mightily. Revenge through the legal system is not new, but this method of commodification of revenge is new. This type of revenge can be justified as easily as vengeance can be justified in any feud or war (“It serves a greater good”); but this variety is mediated through electronic communication and global interconnections that know no sense of local group identity. The homogenizing effect of money and the promise of profit has rendered other factors moot on a new scale of time and amplitude. An individual’s desire for revenge, using the legal system is aided by powerful AI techniques, and enacted using the money culled from thousands of other people, none of whom have any personal interest in the outcome or the people directly involved. This is a high level of depersonalization.
Virtual money is moving through cyberspace to change material reality, underscoring the fact that we’ve extended our minds, our place of abstractions, to create a space where individuals can participate with groups in acting on jointly held ideas. This is a form of artificial intelligence, it’s a space of interconnected consciousness that manifests shared purposes and goals. As such, the entire complex takes on a life separate to its users, yet still an extension of them.
If algorithmic processing and decision making wreaks havoc on our legal system it’s because those values were formed in an interpersonal environment, with compromise, reconciliation and continued survival serving as premises for the logic of social constructs. Survival is in the process of taking on new meaning, divested of individualism and the primacy of biological existence. The confusion and fear that is caused by these rapid changes to established methods and institutions are the result of changes in the nature of our existence. Our virtual selves, digital representations, are carrying out desires and drives without the immediate feedback of traditional community interaction. This results in cries for control and oversight, a desire to pull back the reins on this wild ride. I submit that we must put forth with great urgency a call to define our humanity within this state of flux; we should strive to see the changes that humans are undergoing by technological extension, and communicate our updated understanding of humans as synergistically formed entities.
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