I subscribe to a publication called New Scientist, a British science magazine. It’s a little pricey (because it’s a weekly, unlike Scientific American), and my friend the Grump sometimes gets annoyed by its unabashed leftist political slant, and it’s a bit uneven at times (for example, the current issue has a large “alternative history” section with some questionable speculations about what would have happened if (for example) Newton had not become a scientist [“there would be no computers or any other advanced electronic devices”]).
But it has three saving graces. First, it always has a few articles that are extremely interesting. Second, it has a large science “news” section with brief descriptions of new studies and findings, along with links to internet sites containing the studies themselves, so you can read more if you like. Finally, it gives one a non-U.S. view.
The current edition has an interesting article on the use of software “bots” to perform tasks formerly done by humans. The focus of the article is the use of “bots” in financial markets, where, it is said, they outperform humans:
In a trial in 2001, IBM showed that [bot] trading agents performed better than humans when they were pitched against each other buying and selling commodities. The bots made 7 per cent more cash than the humans. What’s more, when humans were removed from the market so that agents just traded against each other, the average profit margin increased in a simulated commodities market.
The reason for this, according to the article, is that “people only look at three or four variables before making a decision,” whereas “Bots can study hundreds, and refer back to a wealth of historical information on trading trends.
The article speculates that bots will take over more and more of these kinds of functions.
I have to wonder if it could be possible to turn Bots loose in the field of law. My sense is that because so much of law is not really law, but rather politics, which in turn is driven not entirely (and perhaps not even primarily) by rationality, but rather by the hopes and fears of the electorate, it would be difficult for a Bot. The outcome of any particular case depends not just on past precedent (which the Bot could presumably review and digest), but on the facts of the particular case, the intellectual, emotional, and political predisposition of the judge(s) deciding the case, the advocacy skills of the attorneys arguing the case, and so on. Perhaps a Bot could take all this in, but it seems to be an exercise quite different from trading in a market.
At least we attorneys hope so.
Categories: Science