Artificial Intelligence: Robots, Avatars, and the Demise of the Human Mediator

As technology has advanced, you may have wondered whether (or simply when) artificial intelligence devices will replace the humans who perform complex, interactive, interpersonal tasks such as dispute resolution. Has science now progressed to the point that artificial intelligence devices can replace human mediators, arbitrators, dispute resolvers, and problem solvers? Can humanoid robots, attractive avatars, and other relational agents create the requisite level of trust and elicit the truthful, perhaps intimate or painful, disclosures often necessary to resolve a dispute or solve a problem? This article will explore these questions. Regardless of whether the reader is convinced that the demise of the human mediator or arbitrator is imminent, one cannot deny that artificial intelligence now has the capability to assume many of the responsibilities currently being performed by alternative dispute resolution (ADR) practitioners. Artificial intelligence can be imbedded in a variety of physical forms. This article will focus primarily on robots designed to resemble humans and avatars. Robots can, of course, assume whatever form the designer desires, including human, animal, abstract, or strictly functional (as might be seen in an industrial enterprise). Artificial intelligence, however, does not need to be defined by a physical form. Much of what will be discussed in this article will be relevant to, and include, devices that do not have presence in the physical world.1 Avatars, for example, initially were regarded as a “graphic