The short answer: arbitration is a creature of contract. Parties may agree to nearly any decision procedure they choose, and courts enforce those agreements under the Federal Arbitration Act. The FAA nowhere requires that an arbitrator be a natural person.
The honest caveat
Courts have not fully tested awards decided by AI. Anyone who tells you the question is settled is selling something. The relevant design question is therefore: what does the agreement look like if a court someday balks?
How a careful institution answers
Express consent. The parties agree to AI adjudication knowingly, in writing, in the clause itself — not buried in incorporated rules. Consent is the foundation of every enforceability argument.
A human signature by default. In The Turing Tribunal's default tier, a licensed human arbitrator of record independently reviews the AI tribunal's draft, may modify it, and signs the award as their own. The award presented for confirmation is the reasoned decision of a licensed human arbitrator.
A human fallback. If a court ever refuses AI adjudication, the same case proceeds before a human arbitrator under the same Rules. The clause fails safe, not dead.
A de novo human appeal. Either party may elect an appeal decided fresh by human arbitrators. No one is locked in with the machine.
Grounds for challenge don't change
FAA review of awards is narrow — evident partiality, misconduct, exceeding powers. A documents-only AI tribunal with a logged, immutable audit trail and verified citations is, if anything, easier to defend against those challenges than an unrecorded human deliberation: every finding traces to a specific document in the record.
This article is legal information, not legal advice. Review any arbitration clause with licensed counsel before adopting it. The full clause text is on The Clause page; the eight questions skeptics ask most are in the FAQ.