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Insurance firm to replace human workers with AI system

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Re: Insurance firm to replace human workers with AI system

#51

Post by empath75 »

ecopoesis wrote: post #41
viewer5 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mode…

But you're giving an example of how human intuition failed, since she insured the building and had a total loss.

Re: Insurance firm to replace human workers with AI system

#53

Post by dclowd9901 »

charlieflowers wrote: post #28
new299 wrote: post #15

I have no information on this, but the cynic in me thinks this is likely a total non-story/spin. I find it unlikely anyone would be so confident a AI system that they are "planning to introduce" that they'd schedule staff cuts. What's more likely is that staff cuts were already planned. This puts a great spin on a (I would guess most likely free/cheap) experimental deployment of Watson.

I only skimmed, but it indicated that 34% of a pool of ("primarily") 47 workers would be replaced. So ... 16 employees. I suppose that's interesting, but it's not as big as the headline made me believe.

It sounds like they're replacing the adjusters, which I thought was a pretty unstructured aspect of insurance claim management. _That_ was the big story to me. Seems we're all closer to becoming redundant than we thought.

Re: Insurance firm to replace human workers with AI system

#54

Post by avz »

SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #38
amelius wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But some jobs can perhaps be replaced by "lower-education" jobs. As a (perhaps contrived) example, family doctors could be replaced by lab workers, who take simple measurements, feed them into a computer, and the AI does the rest (i.e., correlating conditions to a large number of existing patient files, and hence referring patients to specialists).

To use your example: Suppose right now, we have 1 doctor, 1 nurse, and 3 lab techs per 50 patients per day. I think technology generally lets us do the same job with just 2 nurses and 1 lab tech. So we lose 40% of the jobs from the higher paying side and probably more like 50-75% of the pay. In less contrived examples, I think we lose a lot of the jobs in the 25th-75th percentile range, which is the middle classes. S…

> Suppose right now, we have 1 doctor, 1 nurse, and 3 lab techs per 50 patients per day. I think technology generally lets us do the same job with just 2 nurses and 1 lab tech. So we lose 40% of the jobs from the higher paying side and probably more like 50-75% of the pay.

You're making the extreme assumption that the amount of medical care demanded remains constant despite the fall in prices (e.g. employees: 5->3, patients: 50->50). An alternative extreme is that employment remains fixed while falling prices improve accessibility (e.g. employees: 5->5, patients: 50->90).

In reality we may easily end up somewhere in between (e.g. employees: 5->4, patients: 50->70). This also highlights two aspects of automation: on the dark side, it reduces demand for work, on the bright side it improves availability (here, of medical care). If as a society we're able to deal with the former (e.g. by conjuring up new occupations) we stand to improve our future significantly through the latter.

Re: Insurance firm to replace human workers with AI system

#55

Post by dclowd9901 »

With AI starting to actually supplant jobs, something sad has just occurred to me:

I foresee our (the US) government (and probably others) restricting the development and deployment of AI systems that would supplant human jobs, merely for the sake of ensuring people are employed.

I think it's sad because it would present a real opportunity to advance our society significantly.

Re: Insurance firm to replace human workers with AI system

#56

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

avz wrote: post #54
SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To use your example: Suppose right now, we have 1 doctor, 1 nurse, and 3 lab techs per 50 patients per day. I think technology generally lets us do the same job with just 2 nurses and 1 lab tech. So we lose 40% of the jobs from the higher paying side and probably more like 50-75% of the pay. In less contrived examples, I think we lose a lot of the jobs in the 25th-75th percentile range, which is the middle classes. S…

> Suppose right now, we have 1 doctor, 1 nurse, and 3 lab techs per 50 patients per day. I think technology generally lets us do the same job with just 2 nurses and 1 lab tech. So we lose 40% of the jobs from the higher paying side and probably more like 50-75% of the pay. You're making the extreme assumption that the amount of medical care demanded remains constant despite the fall in prices (e.g. employees: 5->3, p…

I agree automation increases availability. I never implied it didn't have benefits -- just that we're likely to see the disappearance of middle class jobs because we'll be able to fill new ones with computers faster than with people.

Even if it increases employment and availability (4 nurses, 2 techs, 100 customers), we're seeing a decrease in income provided -- 1 doctor and 1 tech for 3 nurses. Less spread across more people.

Re: Insurance firm to replace human workers with AI system

#57

Post by maverick_iceman »

dclowd9901 wrote: post #55

With AI starting to actually supplant jobs, something sad has just occurred to me: I foresee our (the US) government (and probably others) restricting the development and deployment of AI systems that would supplant human jobs, merely for the sake of ensuring people are employed. I think it's sad because it would present a real opportunity to advance our society significantly.

Based on our past history it seems unlikely to happen. Any country which institutes such policies risks falling behind. Also who wants to be branded a Luddite?

Re: Insurance firm to replace human workers with AI system

#58

Post by bawana »

noisy_boy wrote: post #20

I wonder how long before somebody in the US senate introduces law(s) designed to regulate impact of AI on human employment.

why can't we get AI to replace some of our government? Maybe our elected officials wont be saying stupid things? Maybe lobbyists wont be able to buy influence?

Re: Insurance firm to replace human workers with AI system

#59

Post by maverick_iceman »

bawana wrote: post #58
noisy_boy wrote: post #20

I wonder how long before somebody in the US senate introduces law(s) designed to regulate impact of AI on human employment.

why can't we get AI to replace some of our government? Maybe our elected officials wont be saying stupid things? Maybe lobbyists wont be able to buy influence?

We'll use Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz as training set.

Re: Insurance firm to replace human workers with AI system

#60

Post by hehheh »

ecopoesis wrote: post #41
viewer5 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 mode…

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.
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