5 ms·

It will be interesting to see. People are already involved in business-critical processes, and they have a far-from-100% success rate. You can see this with s

It will be interesting to see. People are already involved in business-critical processes, and they have a far-from-100% success rate. You can see this with self-driving cars; 0.00001% of the time, they decide to swerve into oncoming traffic for no reason. But they can't get drunk! So whether or not that's a win is something that only time can tell. (People will be outraged, because no person would ever do what the AI did, but what matters are the numbers in aggregate. One could also argue; why should I have to put up with this when I never drink and drive? It's a good point and involves philosophical discussions about free will and all that.) I guarantee people will be mad when an AI chatbot denies their insurance or customer service claim. But I have a friend who works in customer service and it feels like half her job is correcting the mistakes other customer service agents made. If the first line support was AI, would it change much, other than not paying people to make a bunch of mistakes? Again, it's going to be painful while we try it out and get the data. It feels like it's going to be worse, and individual anecdotes will make each fuckup seem even worse than it is. But it seems inevitable that we're going to get the data. The only way to get VC writing software right now seems to be by tying your company to AI. That means a lot of experiments are about to leak out into the world. We'll learn a lot.

hooverd 3y ago
That's the great part about AI, because computers don't make mistakes, you can launder whatever biases you want through an objective and rational computer.
- Forgeties79 3y ago
  This is such an excellent way of concisely expressing a major fallacy I see whenever I talk about AI/modeling/etc. (I.e. “it isn’t racist it’s just numbers” and other nonsensical takes). I’m borrowing this language for the future.
  - sdenton4 3y ago
    Meanwhile, human judges, juries, parole boards, etc are racist as hell and have no update algorithm...
    - hooverd 3y ago
      That's a hopefully fixable organization problem. I think the closest we should let AI get to judicial decisions is suggested ranges. There still needs to be a person a decision traces back to, who's not just passing through what the computer says.
      - sdenton4 3y ago
        Ha. Human problems never get fixed, just moved around. There's nothing new to help get the racism or of the justice system - a core piece of the problem is that there are only disincentives for mercy and no checks whatsoever on individual biases. We still have a racist system in the US sixty years after the civil rights movement, and I don't see anything changing that anytime soon. Tech problems sometimes get fixed, and occasionally either eliminate a class of human problems or create new ones. It's the only thing that changes... Rejecting tech wholesale means embracing the status quo.
      - yodelshady 3y ago
        There should absolutely be a human where the buck stops. But... "fixing an organisation" involves calling people racist. Then screwing their careers. That should carry a heavy emotional burden. It should involve anger and pushback. "Some weights in an algorithm are wrong" seems a much less fraught problem.
    - melagonster 3y ago
      and we have had racism algorithm in legal services.
  - salawat 3y ago
    Look up the term of art "mathwashing".
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
  We already have this today when anti-theft alarms go off at stores as you exit with your paid purchase. You're presumed guilty because someone didn't disable the tag since the robot can't be wrong.
brightlancer 3y ago
> People will be outraged, because no person would ever do what the AI did, but _what matters are the numbers in aggregate._ That is an opinion, not objective fact. If Grandma June accidentally hits the accelerator, jumps the curb and kills a kindergartener, we can throw her in prison. She is held accountable for her actions. https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/01/25/Woman-83-gets-3-years-for-death-of-girl/52151295999807/ https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/01/25/Woman-83-gets-3-y... If Grandma June is sitting in her "self-driving" car and it spontaneously accelerates, jumps the curb and kills a kindergartener, what can we do? Who is held accountable? Something something "fix the problem, not the blame", but accountability is part of fixing a problem. Improving numbers in the aggregate is good, but it is not (and should not be) the sole matter in discussion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Om...
- andrepd 3y ago
  We can try to provide decent transportation infrastructure with feasible alternatives to driving so that Grandma June doesn't have to operate a 2 ton death machine to live her life, but maybe that's getting offtopic.
- bdowling 3y ago
  That is a strange example, because usually we don’t put people in prison for accidents unless there is specific type of gross negligence (e.g., drunk driving) or malicious disregard for life and safety. > Anderson decided to plead guilty to vehicular homicide because she did not want the family of Karla Campos to endure a trial. Maybe the woman knew that it would be revealed that she was drunk or had been told that she didn’t have the capability any more to drive safely, but she did it anyway. Without knowing all the facts, pleading guilty for an accident seems like a bizarre choice.
- flangola7 3y ago
  This is really not the dilemma it is often portrayed as. You can extend this problem to any instance where a man-made inanimate object kills someone, which we have centuries of precedent for. If a bridge collapses and crushes a schoolbus full of children it's not like we throw our hands up in confusion - there is a very developed legal process that will determine the whos and whats of accountability and punishment. It isn't a new problem, it's something that every court handles on a daily basis. Rebar or autoregression, the core legal elements are the same.
erosenbe0 3y ago
Cherrypicked raw death counts are a lobbyist measuring scheme, not social science. For example, if self-driving cars end up being prone to hitting children darting out on to city streets in new and unpredictable ways, then you have created impediments to the growth and development of children that did not previously exist. Would this be balanced by enhanced safety in other situations? Maybe. These are complex topics like whether and how long schools should have stayed closed during COVID. Balancing the death and disability effects largely falling on adults vs. the educational interests of children.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  "what matters are the numbers in aggregate" is the opposite of cherrypicking. One of those numbers would be the level of danger around children. The unitless number for driving into oncoming traffic wasn't supposed to be a real stat.

hooverd 3y ago

That's the great part about AI, because computers don't make mistakes, you can launder whatever biases you want through an objective and rational computer.

Forgeties79 3y ago
This is such an excellent way of concisely expressing a major fallacy I see whenever I talk about AI/modeling/etc. (I.e. “it isn’t racist it’s just numbers” and other nonsensical takes). I’m borrowing this language for the future.
- sdenton4 3y ago
  Meanwhile, human judges, juries, parole boards, etc are racist as hell and have no update algorithm...
  - hooverd 3y ago
    That's a hopefully fixable organization problem. I think the closest we should let AI get to judicial decisions is suggested ranges. There still needs to be a person a decision traces back to, who's not just passing through what the computer says.
    - sdenton4 3y ago
      Ha. Human problems never get fixed, just moved around. There's nothing new to help get the racism or of the justice system - a core piece of the problem is that there are only disincentives for mercy and no checks whatsoever on individual biases. We still have a racist system in the US sixty years after the civil rights movement, and I don't see anything changing that anytime soon. Tech problems sometimes get fixed, and occasionally either eliminate a class of human problems or create new ones. It's the only thing that changes... Rejecting tech wholesale means embracing the status quo.
    - yodelshady 3y ago
      There should absolutely be a human where the buck stops. But... "fixing an organisation" involves calling people racist. Then screwing their careers. That should carry a heavy emotional burden. It should involve anger and pushback. "Some weights in an algorithm are wrong" seems a much less fraught problem.
  - melagonster 3y ago
    and we have had racism algorithm in legal services.
- salawat 3y ago
  Look up the term of art "mathwashing".
kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
We already have this today when anti-theft alarms go off at stores as you exit with your paid purchase. You're presumed guilty because someone didn't disable the tag since the robot can't be wrong.

brightlancer 3y ago

> People will be outraged, because no person would ever do what the AI did, but _what matters are the numbers in aggregate._ That is an opinion, not objective fact. If Grandma June accidentally hits the accelerator, jumps the curb and kills a kindergartener, we can throw her in prison. She is held accountable for her actions. https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/01/25/Woman-83-gets-3-years-for-death-of-girl/52151295999807/ https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/01/25/Woman-83-gets-3-y... If Grandma June is sitting in her "self-driving" car and it spontaneously accelerates, jumps the curb and kills a kindergartener, what can we do? Who is held accountable? Something something "fix the problem, not the blame", but accountability is part of fixing a problem. Improving numbers in the aggregate is good, but it is not (and should not be) the sole matter in discussion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Omelas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ones_Who_Walk_Away_from_Om...

andrepd 3y ago
We can try to provide decent transportation infrastructure with feasible alternatives to driving so that Grandma June doesn't have to operate a 2 ton death machine to live her life, but maybe that's getting offtopic.
bdowling 3y ago
That is a strange example, because usually we don’t put people in prison for accidents unless there is specific type of gross negligence (e.g., drunk driving) or malicious disregard for life and safety. > Anderson decided to plead guilty to vehicular homicide because she did not want the family of Karla Campos to endure a trial. Maybe the woman knew that it would be revealed that she was drunk or had been told that she didn’t have the capability any more to drive safely, but she did it anyway. Without knowing all the facts, pleading guilty for an accident seems like a bizarre choice.
flangola7 3y ago
This is really not the dilemma it is often portrayed as. You can extend this problem to any instance where a man-made inanimate object kills someone, which we have centuries of precedent for. If a bridge collapses and crushes a schoolbus full of children it's not like we throw our hands up in confusion - there is a very developed legal process that will determine the whos and whats of accountability and punishment. It isn't a new problem, it's something that every court handles on a daily basis. Rebar or autoregression, the core legal elements are the same.

erosenbe0 3y ago

Cherrypicked raw death counts are a lobbyist measuring scheme, not social science. For example, if self-driving cars end up being prone to hitting children darting out on to city streets in new and unpredictable ways, then you have created impediments to the growth and development of children that did not previously exist. Would this be balanced by enhanced safety in other situations? Maybe. These are complex topics like whether and how long schools should have stayed closed during COVID. Balancing the death and disability effects largely falling on adults vs. the educational interests of children.

Dylan16807 3y ago
"what matters are the numbers in aggregate" is the opposite of cherrypicking. One of those numbers would be the level of danger around children. The unitless number for driving into oncoming traffic wasn't supposed to be a real stat.