3 ms·

> it does not know enough to be accurate, so she has to always adjust it What kind of stuff does it miss?

by viewer5 10y ago

ecopoesis 10y ago
Market stuff, like how the companies entire book is doing (what losses they've had so far that year), regional balancing, past payouts to the insured, raising or lowering the overall risk of the book, and just plain sales (sometimes you have to take on more risk then you'd like to meet a sales quota, but you can balance that by making other lower risk clients pay more). It's also complicated because it's hard to model buildings correctly. My sister likes to tell a story about a total loss she had for a standard masonry building with sprinklers. From her point of view, this is the perfect type of building. They're hard to catch on fire, and if there is a fire, the building puts it out. At worse, your damage is limited to the one room or section where the fire was, since the internal masonry walls keep it from spreading. This building burnt down because the solar panels on the roof caught fire, which spread across all the panel over the entire roof. The sprinklers never got a chance to go off because the roof collapsed. It's certainly possible to model this one case, but the problem is there are a million one off cases like this, and we don't know about them until there's a loss. Right now, human intuition from the underwriters and inspectors is what they use to cover try to cover the gap.
- empath75 10y ago
  But you're giving an example of how human intuition failed, since she insured the building and had a total loss.
- hehheh 10y ago
  I'm not in insurance but I assume that it is the nature of pooled risk that there will be a million one-off cases (or N cases where N is the number of members in the pool). Given that, is it possible or even desirable to make changes based on what happened to this specific insured business? Would the cost of that change, be it increased premiums or an outright refusal to insure, outweigh the cost of a smaller pool? I guess that's something for the AI to decide.
- monkmartinez 10y ago
  Why would it matter on the how the entire book is doing? Why can't the AI system take all of this into account assuming it has access to said data? Further, why should the AI system be used to run the entire company like you suggest. That is, it doesn't need to take into account every aspect of the business to replace a large portion of the workforce. > This building burnt down because the solar panels on the roof caught fire, which spread across all the panel over the entire roof. The sprinklers never got a chance to go off because the roof collapsed. Type 3 construction that burned to the ground? It doesn't take a human to realize or intuit that even type 1 buildings burn eventually (ask a firefighter!). If there is a way to truly model every possible variable when insuring a building, I will put money on humans doing a worse job than expert AI systems. You're asking the AI to not only predict but _know_ the future, and not asking that of the human... seems silly.

> it does not know enough to be accurate, so she has to always adjust it What kind of stuff does it miss?

by viewer5 10y ago

> it does not know enough to be accurate, so she has to always adjust it What kind of stuff does it miss?

Market stuff, like how the companies entire book is doing (what losses they've had so far that year), regional balancing, past payouts to the insured, raising or lowering the overall risk of the book, and just plain sales (sometimes you have to take on more risk then you'd like to meet a sales quota, but you can balance that by making other lower risk clients pay more). It's also complicated because it's hard to model buildings correctly. My sister likes to tell a story about a total loss she had for a standard masonry building with sprinklers. From her point of view, this is the perfect type of building. They're hard to catch on fire, and if there is a fire, the building puts it out. At worse, your damage is limited to the one room or section where the fire was, since the internal masonry walls keep it from spreading. This building burnt down because the solar panels on the roof caught fire, which spread across all the panel over the entire roof. The sprinklers never got a chance to go off because the roof collapsed. It's certainly possible to model this one case, but the problem is there are a million one off cases like this, and we don't know about them until there's a loss. Right now, human intuition from the underwriters and inspectors is what they use to cover try to cover the gap.

empath75 10y ago
But you're giving an example of how human intuition failed, since she insured the building and had a total loss.
hehheh 10y ago
I'm not in insurance but I assume that it is the nature of pooled risk that there will be a million one-off cases (or N cases where N is the number of members in the pool). Given that, is it possible or even desirable to make changes based on what happened to this specific insured business? Would the cost of that change, be it increased premiums or an outright refusal to insure, outweigh the cost of a smaller pool? I guess that's something for the AI to decide.
monkmartinez 10y ago
Why would it matter on the how the entire book is doing? Why can't the AI system take all of this into account assuming it has access to said data? Further, why should the AI system be used to run the entire company like you suggest. That is, it doesn't need to take into account every aspect of the business to replace a large portion of the workforce. > This building burnt down because the solar panels on the roof caught fire, which spread across all the panel over the entire roof. The sprinklers never got a chance to go off because the roof collapsed. Type 3 construction that burned to the ground? It doesn't take a human to realize or intuit that even type 1 buildings burn eventually (ask a firefighter!). If there is a way to truly model every possible variable when insuring a building, I will put money on humans doing a worse job than expert AI systems. You're asking the AI to not only predict but _know_ the future, and not asking that of the human... seems silly.