3 ms·

Because a computer can handle 100s of such calls simultaneously. Similarly, I worked on a system that used AI for approvals of payment for medical activities (

by p_l 2mo ago

Because a computer can handle 100s of such calls simultaneously. Similarly, I worked on a system that used AI for approvals of payment for medical activities (in Germany) - it only could fail in favour of the patient (approving when a human would disapprove), thus the ethical issue was fear that reduced workload would cause layoffs for the unionized approvers.

embedding-shape 2mo ago
> Because a computer can handle 100s of such calls simultaneously. "can handle" doing a lot of lifting. Sounds silly, but even getting 1% of the redirections wrong sounds absolutely horrible. Fine, use AI for taking table reservations or whatever, but not when literal lives are at stake, like receiving calls from people with their partner dangerously hurt, they're panicking and are trying to get emergency services to come.
- p_l 2mo ago
  Yes, I agree it does a lot of heavy lifting there. Honestly that's why it needs to both have strict liabilities on operators/developers (no more "computer said so but computer can't be held liable"), as well as what I mentioned in my example - the failure paths should always go for reliable channel, including connecting to a human simply if it cannot gauge the answer with high enough certainty
- hobofan 2mo ago
  > but even getting 1% of the redirections wrong sounds absolutely horrible I know this may be a very poor proxy for reality, but from all the US true crime Netflix/Youtube videos I've seen over the years, it seems like there is a boatload of emergency call takers out there that are very bad at picking up the details from the caller. I'm wondering if this is a thing similar to self driving cars, where people drastically overestimate the current baseline that humans are providing, and where automated systems are mainly not implemented due to liability reasons.

3 ms·

Because a computer can handle 100s of such calls simultaneously. Similarly, I worked on a system that used AI for approvals of payment for medical activities (

by p_l 2mo ago

embedding-shape 2mo ago
> Because a computer can handle 100s of such calls simultaneously. "can handle" doing a lot of lifting. Sounds silly, but even getting 1% of the redirections wrong sounds absolutely horrible. Fine, use AI for taking table reservations or whatever, but not when literal lives are at stake, like receiving calls from people with their partner dangerously hurt, they're panicking and are trying to get emergency services to come.
- p_l 2mo ago
  Yes, I agree it does a lot of heavy lifting there. Honestly that's why it needs to both have strict liabilities on operators/developers (no more "computer said so but computer can't be held liable"), as well as what I mentioned in my example - the failure paths should always go for reliable channel, including connecting to a human simply if it cannot gauge the answer with high enough certainty
- hobofan 2mo ago
  > but even getting 1% of the redirections wrong sounds absolutely horrible I know this may be a very poor proxy for reality, but from all the US true crime Netflix/Youtube videos I've seen over the years, it seems like there is a boatload of emergency call takers out there that are very bad at picking up the details from the caller. I'm wondering if this is a thing similar to self driving cars, where people drastically overestimate the current baseline that humans are providing, and where automated systems are mainly not implemented due to liability reasons.