Edward Alder of Prince’s Chambers and Hong Kong Maritime Arbitration Group (HKMAG) had the privilege of addressing CMAC’s annual flagship arbitration event in Beijing on 6 June 2025 on the topical issue of “Arbitrators & AI”. Like everyone else, arbitrators are using AI for productivity gains. For correspondence and summarisation, that may be acceptable. On the state of the current LLMs, delegation of decision making is technically still far off. Arbitration legislation, like Hong Kong’s Arbitration Ordinance (Cap. 609) and England’s Arbitration Act 1996, implicitly assume a duty not to delegate decision making, but do not make it explicit. Recent AI-specific soft law instruments, like the Silicon Valley AMC’s and CIArb’s guidelines are making the duty of non-delegation explicit. 

Many thanks to 洪慧敏 Hong Huimin and 付 慈 Fu Ci, moderator Dr Wang Xuehua and fellow panellists Dr Fan Yang (CMAC), Cheryl Yu (Reed Smith) and Datuk Prof Sundra Rajoo.