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"AI" Imagine being charged 24 million euros (https://www.01net.com/actualites/piscines-non-declarees-la-traque-par-intelligence-artificielle-a-rapporte-10-mill

"AI" Imagine being charged 24 million euros (https://www.01net.com/actualites/piscines-non-declarees-la-traque-par-intelligence-artificielle-a-rapporte-10-millions-deuros-et-sera-generalisee.html https://www.01net.com/actualites/piscines-non-declarees-la-t...) by Capgemini, known for having fucked up every single public -private partnership in France so they can just run OpenCV on satellite pictures, while being paid for a THIRTY PERCENT ERROR RATE

nottorp 3y ago
Scheme to be extended across the country after trial in nine departments led to extra €10m in tax receipts So far it cost 2.5 times what it made. But tbh i don't think the 30% error rate is relevant. How many photos did it analyze and how many did it select for human review? Unless ... google being involved ... there was no human review.
- ohgodplsno 3y ago
  It was ran in the nine departments where there's the biggest concentration and likelihood of pools. Additionally, these 10m in receipts include fines for not declaring the pools. The actual yearly returns are much lower. Looking for swimming pools in the Creuse is not going to bring in a lot of cash. The DGFiP is hit or miss with these projects, and they rarely hit well.
BrandoElFollito 3y ago
It's not only Capgemini. Most of French digitalization is horrendous. We have a Social Security card (Carte Vitale) that you show when doing medical activities (so to speak). It could have been a great driver for centralized patient documentation (results, prescriptions, ...). What they did instead - a totally fucked up system nobody uses (including doctors and pharmacies) which was architected and coded by an intern with a liberal art diploma. Not only logging in is a shitshow but then you cannot add ANYTHING useful inside. Nothing. OK, this failed so now the govt decided to launch a new program (for the same thing) and nobody understands what this is is how it is supposed to work. At the same time, in Poland, I saw a perfectly well working system that centraizes everything (the public medical world sucks there but that's not the point). Why not reusing this instead of inventing a merdouille again? When COVID blew up, we had the luck to have a brand new exchange platform for schools. When I had to use it, my children said "oh, I did not know that word" when i started to yell on the screen. It is so bad that by just typing here I risk to break my keyboard. We have idiots in digitalization in France. I am sure other countries are the same but here this is a tradition since after the Minitel. If you can fuck it up, they will - with our taxes.
- ElFitz 3y ago
  > which was architected and coded by an intern with a liberal art diploma What? I tried to look it up, no luck. Do you have any link that goes into more details?
  - gryn 3y ago
    don't think you'll find anything explicit. but these big french contracting companies are very well known for their technical incompetence. they are not tech companies, their number one priority is to land lucrative contracts and keep renewing them and growing them, executing them or worrying about the quality of the end product is an afterthought. the compensation in these companies is all the proof you need, most of the money is spent on 'business guys' and whole big ladder of them, projects on the technical side get staffed by who can accept the least pay regardless of skill. failed to get your diploma, great they can hire you for a big discount, have an art degree or anything else but know how to argue in a interview great you're hired. they hire such people by the shovel everywhere. they are not the only company that does it almost all the big and smaller ones. here are some example of job offers that you can translate, and keep in mind that even is you don't meet almost any criteria they can still hire you if you accept a small enough price. I know a few of them in person. - https://fr.indeed.com/q-capgemini-reconversion-professionnelle-emplois.html?vjk=beee9e741513536e https://fr.indeed.com/q-capgemini-reconversion-professionnel... - https://jobs.capgemini.com/fr-fr/job/Reconversion-Professionnelle-en-Informatique-Le-BOURGET-HF/755047201/ https://jobs.capgemini.com/fr-fr/job/Reconversion-Profession... these a few example but search in indeed and other hiring webites and you'll find them spamming this kind of offers everywhere. having a career as a tech guy in these companies is a dead end, and a recipe for depression.
orwin 3y ago
Capgemini and Atos are the worst that happened to French tech. Atos managed to turn me from liberal to communist when in comes to public services and general interest. I would rather deal with slow, 'lazy' bureaucrats than greedy little shit who can't own their mistakes. At least, when the corruption is within the government, it can't be that huge and blatant. A state secretary can say 'it would be easier to get that subvention if you used Atos Bullion' and fear nothing. By the way, Bullion software support is them emailing redhat support, but more expensive.
- ElFitz 3y ago
  Hey! It’s most likely thanks to one of them (or Sopra Steria, can’t tell) that we got this beauty: https://web.archive.org/web/20180323092106/https://projectfailures.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/project-from-hell/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180323092106/https://projectfa... HN conversation at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16793884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16793884
adhesive_wombat 3y ago
Nice to know Capita (or Crapita as Private Eye know them) aren't alone in their dreadfulness.
isoprophlex 3y ago
lol, I whipped up the exact same computer vision thing to detect faded road markings in satellite images, in under a week. Including a horrible day of labeling images for training. But the thing is... look at their share price. Capgemini is doing something right because their market cap is going up all the time. Their consultants are relatively expensive to hire, and they themselves get paid relatively little. They (and firms like them) spend a ridiculous, soul-crushing amount on sales. Building relationships with the people that matter, to then cut deals that, on the face of it, just don't make any sense. Delivering what you promise is entirely optional in this business model. (So in a nice symmetrical way their underpaid consultants are also often undertrained, because who cares) C'est la vie, I'm afraid...

nottorp 3y ago

Scheme to be extended across the country after trial in nine departments led to extra €10m in tax receipts So far it cost 2.5 times what it made. But tbh i don't think the 30% error rate is relevant. How many photos did it analyze and how many did it select for human review? Unless ... google being involved ... there was no human review.

ohgodplsno 3y ago
It was ran in the nine departments where there's the biggest concentration and likelihood of pools. Additionally, these 10m in receipts include fines for not declaring the pools. The actual yearly returns are much lower. Looking for swimming pools in the Creuse is not going to bring in a lot of cash. The DGFiP is hit or miss with these projects, and they rarely hit well.

BrandoElFollito 3y ago

It's not only Capgemini. Most of French digitalization is horrendous. We have a Social Security card (Carte Vitale) that you show when doing medical activities (so to speak). It could have been a great driver for centralized patient documentation (results, prescriptions, ...). What they did instead - a totally fucked up system nobody uses (including doctors and pharmacies) which was architected and coded by an intern with a liberal art diploma. Not only logging in is a shitshow but then you cannot add ANYTHING useful inside. Nothing. OK, this failed so now the govt decided to launch a new program (for the same thing) and nobody understands what this is is how it is supposed to work. At the same time, in Poland, I saw a perfectly well working system that centraizes everything (the public medical world sucks there but that's not the point). Why not reusing this instead of inventing a merdouille again? When COVID blew up, we had the luck to have a brand new exchange platform for schools. When I had to use it, my children said "oh, I did not know that word" when i started to yell on the screen. It is so bad that by just typing here I risk to break my keyboard. We have idiots in digitalization in France. I am sure other countries are the same but here this is a tradition since after the Minitel. If you can fuck it up, they will - with our taxes.

ElFitz 3y ago
> which was architected and coded by an intern with a liberal art diploma What? I tried to look it up, no luck. Do you have any link that goes into more details?
- gryn 3y ago
  don't think you'll find anything explicit. but these big french contracting companies are very well known for their technical incompetence. they are not tech companies, their number one priority is to land lucrative contracts and keep renewing them and growing them, executing them or worrying about the quality of the end product is an afterthought. the compensation in these companies is all the proof you need, most of the money is spent on 'business guys' and whole big ladder of them, projects on the technical side get staffed by who can accept the least pay regardless of skill. failed to get your diploma, great they can hire you for a big discount, have an art degree or anything else but know how to argue in a interview great you're hired. they hire such people by the shovel everywhere. they are not the only company that does it almost all the big and smaller ones. here are some example of job offers that you can translate, and keep in mind that even is you don't meet almost any criteria they can still hire you if you accept a small enough price. I know a few of them in person. - https://fr.indeed.com/q-capgemini-reconversion-professionnelle-emplois.html?vjk=beee9e741513536e https://fr.indeed.com/q-capgemini-reconversion-professionnel... - https://jobs.capgemini.com/fr-fr/job/Reconversion-Professionnelle-en-Informatique-Le-BOURGET-HF/755047201/ https://jobs.capgemini.com/fr-fr/job/Reconversion-Profession... these a few example but search in indeed and other hiring webites and you'll find them spamming this kind of offers everywhere. having a career as a tech guy in these companies is a dead end, and a recipe for depression.

orwin 3y ago

Capgemini and Atos are the worst that happened to French tech. Atos managed to turn me from liberal to communist when in comes to public services and general interest. I would rather deal with slow, 'lazy' bureaucrats than greedy little shit who can't own their mistakes. At least, when the corruption is within the government, it can't be that huge and blatant. A state secretary can say 'it would be easier to get that subvention if you used Atos Bullion' and fear nothing. By the way, Bullion software support is them emailing redhat support, but more expensive.

ElFitz 3y ago
Hey! It’s most likely thanks to one of them (or Sopra Steria, can’t tell) that we got this beauty: https://web.archive.org/web/20180323092106/https://projectfailures.wordpress.com/2008/06/24/project-from-hell/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180323092106/https://projectfa... HN conversation at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16793884 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16793884

adhesive_wombat 3y ago

Nice to know Capita (or Crapita as Private Eye know them) aren't alone in their dreadfulness.

isoprophlex 3y ago

lol, I whipped up the exact same computer vision thing to detect faded road markings in satellite images, in under a week. Including a horrible day of labeling images for training. But the thing is... look at their share price. Capgemini is doing something right because their market cap is going up all the time. Their consultants are relatively expensive to hire, and they themselves get paid relatively little. They (and firms like them) spend a ridiculous, soul-crushing amount on sales. Building relationships with the people that matter, to then cut deals that, on the face of it, just don't make any sense. Delivering what you promise is entirely optional in this business model. (So in a nice symmetrical way their underpaid consultants are also often undertrained, because who cares) C'est la vie, I'm afraid...