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The Machine Fired Me

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Re: The Machine Fired Me

#341

Post by lmm »

ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #313
jexah wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're really blaming the wrong people. Blame the doctor for screwing it up, your wife for not checking the prescription, or the government for creating/enforcing the relevant laws that would have put not only the chemist but their entire franchise underground for "doing the right thing". Laws are laws, broskie, don't expect everybody to break them for you. If the migraine was really bad (bad enough to cause tangible…

So in effect he's right to suggest the pharmacist should just be replaced by a robot because you would have them follow the rules no matter what with all humanity stripped out. If there was more than one pharmacist available it wouldn't have killed him/her to go and take a look at the wife in the car.

The pharmacist can, and should, use their human judgement to refuse to dispense drugs even when prescribed. But they don't and shouldn't use their human judgement to dispense drugs that weren't prescribed; this is by design and for good reason. It's a two-person rule: you only get the drugs if both the pharmacist and the doctor formally agreed you should get them.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#342

Post by thecatspaw »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #285
letsgetphysITal wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been a real problem with facial recognition. Faces used to train engines are typically Caucasian, so the ability to distinguish other ethnicities is quite sub-par. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/the-u...

Isn't there a problem with shadow contrast which makes features more difficult to pick out on darker skinned faces? I vaguely recall an East Asian developer giving that reason for why he developed on Western data-sets.

Wouldnt it make more sense then to develop _not_ on the easycase but the hard ones?

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#343

Post by newest_user_ »

detaro wrote: post #330
gota wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this is the US? There are benefits to having a national, public, unique ID # for each person and this is one of them; it reduces the number of 'they had the same name' mistakes to nearly zero

Doesn't a US employer have their employees social security number, which would fulfill exactly this role if people cared to look at it?

Social security numbers are not unique, but combine them with a birthday and name, and it gets pretty close.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#344

Post by rixed »

doc_gunthrop wrote: post #186
bonyt wrote: post #161

This is literally an episode of Better Off Ted.[1] In it, the titular Ted is inadvertenly deleted from the company system when trying to correct a misspelling of his last name. Eventually, he is forced to interview for his own job as the system had already put out an ad for his replacement. I think the most striking part of it, and of the true story from the post, is the human factor - the idea that the humans involv…

Reminds me of Frank Herbert's ominous (fictional) prophecy: “Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.”

Sounds like what Brecht once wrote about the luddites, something along the lines of: "you appear to be dominated by machines only because there are men hiding behind those machines" (can't retrieve the actual quote now, was on a treatise on theater)

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#345

Post by molf »

garmaine wrote: post #325
kbart wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in such case contract usually has a clause about premature termination and related compensation.

Did you read the article? There was no premature termination here. He was “fired” exactly because his contract expired. It’s a shit situation and the company should have made him whole, but on ethical not legal grounds.

In many EU countries a contract does not actually end if you continue to show up to do work in mutual (implicit) agreement with the managers at the company you work for. It would constitute an implicit extension of the contract, effectively renewing it under the same terms for the same duration (with a maximum of 1 year IIRC).

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#346

Post by marvin »

teekert wrote: post #243
ReverseCold wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay this example makes sense. No prescription == no drugs (especially for painkillers and other things that people abuse). If you think this is a bad thing, then it's an organizational problem and has nothing to do with computers.

If you are a human and you can see in the computer that the prescription is regularly updated and you can even call the doctor if you doubted it. You can even check the prescription afterwards and if my story doesn't check out, do something about it. The migraine was pretty bad, imo it was like not treating a broken leg because of a missing insurance card or something.

Hell, most humane countries do it like that way already. My pharmacist parents in Norway wouldn’t have a problem with this, based on anecdotes over the years.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#347

Post by acomjean »

ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #313
jexah wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're really blaming the wrong people. Blame the doctor for screwing it up, your wife for not checking the prescription, or the government for creating/enforcing the relevant laws that would have put not only the chemist but their entire franchise underground for "doing the right thing". Laws are laws, broskie, don't expect everybody to break them for you. If the migraine was really bad (bad enough to cause tangible…

So in effect he's right to suggest the pharmacist should just be replaced by a robot because you would have them follow the rules no matter what with all humanity stripped out. If there was more than one pharmacist available it wouldn't have killed him/her to go and take a look at the wife in the car.

You are right and make an interesting point. Part of the advantage of dealing with a human is that one hopes they can deal with whatever strange problem it thrown at them.

If you can’t deal with corner cases, or have none than leveraging rules/software is the way to go.

I think of vending machines and parking meters as automation of simple tasks, but what to do when they break?

I think google tries this by trying to “automate all the things”. It works most times but when it goes wrong it makes it very frustrating to correct.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#348

Post by rixed »

lmm wrote: post #341
ajeet_dhaliwal wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So in effect he's right to suggest the pharmacist should just be replaced by a robot because you would have them follow the rules no matter what with all humanity stripped out. If there was more than one pharmacist available it wouldn't have killed him/her to go and take a look at the wife in the car.

The pharmacist can, and should, use their human judgement to refuse to dispense drugs even when prescribed. But they don't and shouldn't use their human judgement to dispense drugs that weren't prescribed; this is by design and for good reason. It's a two-person rule: you only get the drugs if both the pharmacist and the doctor formally agreed you should get them.

The problem seems to be that the drug has indeed been prescribed, but the writing was erroneous. This is not about "should we freely sell drug", but about "should we use human judgment in addition to paper orders".

Clearly, some commenters are also trying hard to be robot-swappable. :)

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#349

Post by eythian »

gaius wrote: post #321
rinchik wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not particularly familiar with the system at Google, but at any somewhat decent tech company in order to get a promotion you have to already perform as you would in your "future" role for some time, with higher-level expectations and responsibilities. For example, is someone with level I is up for level II promo, she/he has to match level II criteria long before actual promotion is due.

Curious, do Google regularly give free stuff to their customers (advertisers) hoping that in a few months those customers will upgrade to a higher service?

Yes, they have free trials of many things.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#350

Post by skj »

cannam wrote: post #303
drewg123 wrote: post #11

I had a somewhat similar, but much less serious experience at Google. I resigned just after I had gotten a promotion, but before the date when the promo was effective. Much to my surprise, the resignation (slated to be effective after the promo) somehow cancelled the promo via some automated system. However, a promo at Google is a huge deal. I really wanted the promotion to go through, so that I would have that level…

What is "go/epitaphs"?

An internal Google site that let's people see who has left the company and, occasionally, why.
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