8 ms·

Government audit of AI finds no AI

83 points by elsewhen 5y ago

FridayoLeary 5y ago
So have I got this right? -The state of Utah makes some kind of contract with Banjo utilizing AI to improve public safety -Banjo received a whole load of money and -Did absolutely nothing with it. -It took the auditors a whole year to work that out. Am I being too harsh? Can anyone fill in the gaps?
- mark_l_watson 5y ago
  I think your summary is good. Not too off topic: since the 1980s, I have referred to symbolic AI (expert systems, non-neural NLP, etc.), neural networks, and now deep learning models as “AI” and use AGI when referring to progress towards “real AI”. I only mention this because so many people now use the term machine instead. After 40 years of using the term “AI” I don’t feel like changing. re: the article: the real story is a (allegedly, from the article) cheating contractor selling snake oil. Part of the life cycle of machine learning models is the evaluation of checking that the model stays valid in time, looking for data drift in the original training and test data, etc. That these models NEVER passed verification, is repugnant to me.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    https://www.theonion.com/revolutionary-new-driverless-car-requires-zero-function-1847048521 https://www.theonion.com/revolutionary-new-driverless-car-re... > In what many are calling the future of the automotive industry, a revolutionary driverless car unveiled Tuesday requires zero functional technology to generate profit. “While many companies in the autonomous vehicle sector have unveiled models to generate funding with little feasible technology, what sets X-Course apart is that we make money without any self-driving technology whatsoever and absolutely no plans to ever develop it,” said X-Course CEO Patrick Medill, adding that his company had shattered industry experts’ previous belief that companies could only succeed in the self-driving space by at least pretending to develop new technologies.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      Being a writer in the comedy / satire field sure got harder in the last years...
- ARandomerDude 5y ago
  The fact that a government bureaucracy detected fraud/waste in just one year is amazing.
  - truffdog 5y ago
    The Mormons run a tight ship
    - ghostbrainalpha 5y ago
      Except with catching serial killers or pedophiles. Then its pretty fair to call us naïve.
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    My experience from working on the contractor side, and some friends' experience from working on the government side, is that the people on the ground are generally aware of it almost immediately. The real problem is that, oftentimes, rules that legislators have imposed with an ostensible purpose of preventing fraud and waste ironically make it almost impossible for anyone who cares and is close to the problem to do anything about it. In short, this idea that public servants are ineffective has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it's also a meme that is incredibly convenient for legislators and lobbyists, because it's so easy for them to co-opt for their own gain.
    - Bukhmanizer 5y ago
      > this idea that public servants are ineffective has become a self-fulfilling prophecy This is spot on and something I’ve also felt when working close to government.
- bityard 5y ago
  I worked in the department of defense 20 years ago and I can tell you for sure that for every news article that describes a government contract where the contractor got paid and delivered nothing, there are ten more that you don't hear about because management or even whole organizations buried them out of embarrassment and/or CYA.
- kazinator 5y ago
  Possible gap: -they only started digging when the past rap sheet of the CEO became known.
colejohnson66 5y ago
For those who thought the title was implying that the government found no “intelligence”, just machine learning: that’s not what it means. The company the contract was awarded to built nothing. > But in a surprise twist, an audit and report released last week found no bias in the algorithm because there was no algorithm to assess in the first place.
- Tenoke 5y ago
  I'm amazed that when asked to provide code they didn't at least feed whatever data to an off the shelf NN to show something.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
"shock pikachu face"
ARandomerDude 5y ago
This headline is misleading. It should be something like Company Defrauds Utah Government with False AI Claims.
- IshKebab 5y ago
  Or Utah government falls for fake AI claims.
andyxor 5y ago
The title needs a correction: "Audit of AI with ties to white supremacy finds no AI and no white supremacy"
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
unemphysbro 5y ago
so now can I just say I want a tesla cybertruck in the sbir directly or do I have to start a AI medical company?
quirkot 5y ago
Read this expecting the AI to be just mechanical turk all the way down, but (spoiler), it was pure vaporware. Nice to read a new angle on the problem!
andrewclunn 5y ago
Scamming people directly is for low-end criminals, while scamming wealthy people indirectly through investment firms requires more skill, but scamming everyone through government contracts is where the real money is.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  There is also a lot of money to be made scamming poor people via wage theft. When you compare the consequences of an employee stealing something versus a company not paying the correct wages you see that that’s almost the perfect crime.
cs702 5y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority, i.e., the long tail, of companies claiming to have some form of "AI" turn out to have nothing that could even generously be called "AI." Judging from my limited experience, I'd expect this to be especially true in production code. The not-so-secret dirty secret is that "AI" for many or most companies today is akin to "sex" for high-school students: Many claim to have it, but few actually do.
- bumby 5y ago
  What’s the chances this platform [1] actually uses AI vs a relatively simple rules based formula? [1] https://www.juggernautai.app/ https://www.juggernautai.app/
- ajcp 5y ago
  Kinda of harkens back to that Mat Velloso quote: "Difference between machine learning and AI: If it is written in Python, it's probably machine learning; if it is written in PowerPoint, it's probably AI."[1] Beyond that I think that branding things as "AI" in the way we do today gets around the John McCarthy truism: "As soon as it works, no one calls it AI any more."[2] 1. https://twitter.com/matvelloso/status/1065778379612282885 https://twitter.com/matvelloso/status/1065778379612282885 2. https://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/138907-john-mccarthy/fulltext https://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/138907-john-mccarthy/fu...
  - Analemma_ 5y ago
    Or the other quote: “When you’re fundraising, it’s AI; when you’re hiring, it’s ML; when you’re implementing, it’s linear regression.”
luxuryballs 5y ago
These days I can never tell what people mean when they say white supremacist. So often I take it literally and it turns out to be implying some kind of ethereal nuanced phenomenon or social boogeyman rather than someone who actually actively claims white people are some kind of supreme race. In my town there was a local scandal of sorts where some people got exposed as promoting white nationalism but then they were called white supremacists in all the reporting. I got some very aggressive responses when I suggested that Japan is historically very Japanese nationalist but that doesn’t mean they think Japanese people are a supreme race. There must be some sliding scale correlating nuance with hostility, it makes things very confusing to understand and discuss. I’ve even seen people lately claim that striving to always do better and improve your life or maintain a high standard of living or make a better life for your kids is actually racist! That being said, does anyone know what they actually mean by white supremacist in this article?
- ehutch79 5y ago
  The article said that the ceo was involved in shooting up a synagog... soooo.... kind of hard to defend as 'striving to do better'
- droopyEyelids 5y ago
  It's the very first paragraph. >In April 2020, news broke that Banjo CEO Damien Patton ... pled guilty to involvement in a 1990 shooting attack on a synagogue in Tennessee.
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  I am not claiming this is the case, only pointing out a subtle difference between “maintain a standard of living…make a better life for your kids” and “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” The former is self-concern, the latter is dividing the world into whites and non-whites. similar to japanese people making a distinction between japanese and non-japanese, it is not automatically supremacist, but being concerned for the survival of your race (or preferring politics that keeps your nation and your race aligned) does seem awfully close to thinking that it’s better to keep your race in charge. so to me, i would need someone to explain how being white nationalist is distinct from white supremacy. is a nationalist just concerned with whites becoming a minority? why, if not the assumption of superiority?

83 points by elsewhen 5y ago

So have I got this right? -The state of Utah makes some kind of contract with Banjo utilizing AI to improve public safety -Banjo received a whole load of money and -Did absolutely nothing with it. -It took the auditors a whole year to work that out. Am I being too harsh? Can anyone fill in the gaps?

mark_l_watson 5y ago
I think your summary is good. Not too off topic: since the 1980s, I have referred to symbolic AI (expert systems, non-neural NLP, etc.), neural networks, and now deep learning models as “AI” and use AGI when referring to progress towards “real AI”. I only mention this because so many people now use the term machine instead. After 40 years of using the term “AI” I don’t feel like changing. re: the article: the real story is a (allegedly, from the article) cheating contractor selling snake oil. Part of the life cycle of machine learning models is the evaluation of checking that the model stays valid in time, looking for data drift in the original training and test data, etc. That these models NEVER passed verification, is repugnant to me.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  https://www.theonion.com/revolutionary-new-driverless-car-requires-zero-function-1847048521 https://www.theonion.com/revolutionary-new-driverless-car-re... > In what many are calling the future of the automotive industry, a revolutionary driverless car unveiled Tuesday requires zero functional technology to generate profit. “While many companies in the autonomous vehicle sector have unveiled models to generate funding with little feasible technology, what sets X-Course apart is that we make money without any self-driving technology whatsoever and absolutely no plans to ever develop it,” said X-Course CEO Patrick Medill, adding that his company had shattered industry experts’ previous belief that companies could only succeed in the self-driving space by at least pretending to develop new technologies.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Being a writer in the comedy / satire field sure got harder in the last years...
ARandomerDude 5y ago
The fact that a government bureaucracy detected fraud/waste in just one year is amazing.
- truffdog 5y ago
  The Mormons run a tight ship
  - ghostbrainalpha 5y ago
    Except with catching serial killers or pedophiles. Then its pretty fair to call us naïve.
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  My experience from working on the contractor side, and some friends' experience from working on the government side, is that the people on the ground are generally aware of it almost immediately. The real problem is that, oftentimes, rules that legislators have imposed with an ostensible purpose of preventing fraud and waste ironically make it almost impossible for anyone who cares and is close to the problem to do anything about it. In short, this idea that public servants are ineffective has become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it's also a meme that is incredibly convenient for legislators and lobbyists, because it's so easy for them to co-opt for their own gain.
  - Bukhmanizer 5y ago
    > this idea that public servants are ineffective has become a self-fulfilling prophecy This is spot on and something I’ve also felt when working close to government.
bityard 5y ago
I worked in the department of defense 20 years ago and I can tell you for sure that for every news article that describes a government contract where the contractor got paid and delivered nothing, there are ten more that you don't hear about because management or even whole organizations buried them out of embarrassment and/or CYA.
kazinator 5y ago
Possible gap: -they only started digging when the past rap sheet of the CEO became known.

colejohnson66 5y ago

For those who thought the title was implying that the government found no “intelligence”, just machine learning: that’s not what it means. The company the contract was awarded to built nothing. > But in a surprise twist, an audit and report released last week found no bias in the algorithm because there was no algorithm to assess in the first place.

Tenoke 5y ago
I'm amazed that when asked to provide code they didn't at least feed whatever data to an off the shelf NN to show something.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

"shock pikachu face"

ARandomerDude 5y ago

This headline is misleading. It should be something like Company Defrauds Utah Government with False AI Claims.

IshKebab 5y ago
Or Utah government falls for fake AI claims.

andyxor 5y ago

The title needs a correction: "Audit of AI with ties to white supremacy finds no AI and no white supremacy"

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

unemphysbro 5y ago

so now can I just say I want a tesla cybertruck in the sbir directly or do I have to start a AI medical company?

quirkot 5y ago

Read this expecting the AI to be just mechanical turk all the way down, but (spoiler), it was pure vaporware. Nice to read a new angle on the problem!

andrewclunn 5y ago

Scamming people directly is for low-end criminals, while scamming wealthy people indirectly through investment firms requires more skill, but scamming everyone through government contracts is where the real money is.

spaetzleesser 5y ago
There is also a lot of money to be made scamming poor people via wage theft. When you compare the consequences of an employee stealing something versus a company not paying the correct wages you see that that’s almost the perfect crime.

cs702 5y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if the vast majority, i.e., the long tail, of companies claiming to have some form of "AI" turn out to have nothing that could even generously be called "AI." Judging from my limited experience, I'd expect this to be especially true in production code. The not-so-secret dirty secret is that "AI" for many or most companies today is akin to "sex" for high-school students: Many claim to have it, but few actually do.

bumby 5y ago
What’s the chances this platform [1] actually uses AI vs a relatively simple rules based formula? [1] https://www.juggernautai.app/ https://www.juggernautai.app/
ajcp 5y ago
Kinda of harkens back to that Mat Velloso quote: "Difference between machine learning and AI: If it is written in Python, it's probably machine learning; if it is written in PowerPoint, it's probably AI."[1] Beyond that I think that branding things as "AI" in the way we do today gets around the John McCarthy truism: "As soon as it works, no one calls it AI any more."[2] 1. https://twitter.com/matvelloso/status/1065778379612282885 https://twitter.com/matvelloso/status/1065778379612282885 2. https://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/138907-john-mccarthy/fulltext https://cacm.acm.org/blogs/blog-cacm/138907-john-mccarthy/fu...
- Analemma_ 5y ago
  Or the other quote: “When you’re fundraising, it’s AI; when you’re hiring, it’s ML; when you’re implementing, it’s linear regression.”

luxuryballs 5y ago

These days I can never tell what people mean when they say white supremacist. So often I take it literally and it turns out to be implying some kind of ethereal nuanced phenomenon or social boogeyman rather than someone who actually actively claims white people are some kind of supreme race. In my town there was a local scandal of sorts where some people got exposed as promoting white nationalism but then they were called white supremacists in all the reporting. I got some very aggressive responses when I suggested that Japan is historically very Japanese nationalist but that doesn’t mean they think Japanese people are a supreme race. There must be some sliding scale correlating nuance with hostility, it makes things very confusing to understand and discuss. I’ve even seen people lately claim that striving to always do better and improve your life or maintain a high standard of living or make a better life for your kids is actually racist! That being said, does anyone know what they actually mean by white supremacist in this article?

ehutch79 5y ago
The article said that the ceo was involved in shooting up a synagog... soooo.... kind of hard to defend as 'striving to do better'
droopyEyelids 5y ago
It's the very first paragraph. >In April 2020, news broke that Banjo CEO Damien Patton ... pled guilty to involvement in a 1990 shooting attack on a synagogue in Tennessee.
jazzyjackson 5y ago
I am not claiming this is the case, only pointing out a subtle difference between “maintain a standard of living…make a better life for your kids” and “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” The former is self-concern, the latter is dividing the world into whites and non-whites. similar to japanese people making a distinction between japanese and non-japanese, it is not automatically supremacist, but being concerned for the survival of your race (or preferring politics that keeps your nation and your race aligned) does seem awfully close to thinking that it’s better to keep your race in charge. so to me, i would need someone to explain how being white nationalist is distinct from white supremacy. is a nationalist just concerned with whites becoming a minority? why, if not the assumption of superiority?