Crowd Arbitration: Crowdsourced Dispute Resolution Part I

This post kicks off a series of blog posts showcasing papers written by Mr. Bayer’s law students from the University of Texas School of Law.  The first paper presented is written by Ms. Leonora Camner. We’ll start with a little introduction to give you a taste of what’s to come! 

Crowd Arbitration: Crowdsourced Dispute Resolution Part I

Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V

By: Leonora Camner

Meaningful artificial intelligence is still a far-away technology. But crowdsourced intelligence, which harnesses the collective knowledge, experience, and analysis of a large group of people, is quickly becoming a powerful and effective method for solving problems. Crowdsourcing works by utilizing the power of large numbers. While an individual may have biases and mistakes, and is only able to generate a few particular ideas, a large group of people can balance out the problems of the individual, and come up with a much greater body of new ideas. With so many ideas and perspectives pooled together, a superior kind of thinking can emerge.

Can crowdsourcing be applied to alternative dispute-resolution? This paper will explore the potential that crowdsourced dispute resolution, made possible by current technology, has to provide as a radical alternative to current dispute resolution processes.

What if you could reproduce a jury trial millions of times, for almost no cost, and even less time? What if you could average the views and decisions of a large selection of judges on a single issue? These are the kinds of possibilities that crowdsourcing opens up for dispute resolution.

Crowdsourcing

According to Merriam Webster, “Crowdsourcing” means “the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers.” Crowdsourcing, Merriam-webster.com, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crowdsourcing.

Real crowdsourcing became possible with the invention of the internet, which allowed many people to vote and participate in discussions online quickly and cheaply. Many online projects can be considered crowdsourcing, such as Wikipedia, Threadless, and Kickstarter.  Daren Brabham, Crowdsourcing as a Model for Problem Solving: An Introduction and Cases, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies Vol. 14(1) 75, 76-77  (2008), http://www.clickadvisor.com/downloads/Brabham_Crowdsourcing_Problem_Solving.pdf.

Mechanical Turk is Amazon’s service dedicated to crowd intelligence; it allows employers to post cheap, minor tasks for mass amounts of people to complete. See Mechanical Turk, https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome (last visited March 23, 2014). Many psychological studies and translation companies use Mechanical Turk to utilize crowd intelligence.

Brabham explains that:

“This ‘wisdom of crowds’ is derived not from averaging solutions, but from aggregating them: ‘After all, think about what happens if you ask a hundred people to run a 100-meter race, and then average their times. The average time will not be better than the time of the fastest runners. It will be worse. It will be a mediocre time. But ask a hundred people to answer a question or solve a problem, and the average answer will often be at least as good as the answer of the smartest member. With most things, the average is mediocrity. With decision making, it’s often excellence. ‘You could say it’s as if we’ve been programmed to be collectively smart.'” Brabham, supra at 79-80  (quoting Surowiecki, 2004: 11).

Stay tuned for more on crowdsourcing in dispute resolution!