Recent articles have focused on two components of a digital legal infrastructure. This article identifies a third—the linkage between policy and resources, and describes why it is coming our way.
Today, the connection between policy and the funding required to enact policy is clunky and loose. Authorization bills require estimates that take months to build and are frequently wrong. Unfunded mandates impose financial burdens on state budgets. Policy decisions are made without a clear understanding of their economic impact. AI, along with cousin, datamining—the ability to harvest vast amounts of information from disparate databases—could change this. Machine learning algorithms are being developed today that foreshadow this. The RAND Corporation recently proposed a model for rapidly and precisely estimating the cost of disaster response. Variables could include geography, time of year, infrastructure development, topography, population, and other attributes not considered today. Such a tool could improve disaster relief budgeting and speed the flow of money to affected areas. In Australia, a machine learning algorithm has been used to predict the cost of large-scale construction projects. One model came to within 6% of actual project costs, while older regression models were not close. In Germany, another model accurately predicted that cost of engineering and professional services for major construction projects.
Each societal level has a different legal infrastructure, i.e., a way to compile decisions and establish mechanisms to enforce those decisions. Nation-states use printed material. The next legal infrastructure will use computers. This could strengthen the link between policy and resources: federal mandates come with the funding to enable them; cost overruns largely disappear; policy decisions come with accurate assessments of economic impact and funding sources.
The linking of decision-making to resources is a key component of a new legal infrastructure. A new infrastructure will be needed to sustain a new societal level. (Rome fell from a republic back to a fiefdom because it did not have a printing infrastructure to sustain it.) In World Leadership, I predicted that a digital legal infrastructure has already begun to emerge. These new technologies suggest it’s well underway.
Source:
Ismael Arciniegas Rueda and Parousisa Rockstroh, “Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are Important Tools to Improve Cost Estimation for Natural Disasters in Electric Utilities,” RAND Corporation, 4 December 2020.
Erik Matel, Faridaddin Vahdatikhaki, Siavash Hosseinyalamdary, Thijs Evers, Hans Voordijk, “An Artificial Neural Network Approach for Cost Estimation of Engineering Services,” International Journal of Construction Management, Vol 22, Iss.7, 2022
Craig Stedman, Adam Hughes, “Datamining,” Business Analytics, 2023
Ajibade Aibinu, “Intelligence Estimator,” University of Melbourne School of Design
Photo: Northern Illinois University
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