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The Machine Fired Me

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Re: The Machine Fired Me

#381

Post by daxelrod »

krzat wrote: post #368
sametmax wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly. If you ask "do you understand ?" and "will you do it?" they will tell you yes as well. It's not a verbal tick. It's just not socially acceptable to say no.

I wonder if western culture has similiar quirks that we don't even realise.

“How are you?”

“Good”

Tons of people have this exchange out of politeness. The person asking “How are you?” doesn’t really want to know details. The person answering is expected to be brief and positive. It’s only among friends that the same question is expected to get an honest and detailed answer.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#382

Post by 2sk21 »

romwell wrote: post #44

I have a story in a similar vein, although a much less scary one. In that instance, The Machine Cleaned Out My Desk. I had a cubicle at the company HQ, but was for some period of time working from home in another state. I still kept quite a few things in the cubicle (notebooks, mugs, etc), which I used when I was in the area. When I finally came back, I noticed, after a month or two, that my office number has not bee…

Now that think about this, this is a clear example of the famous Frame problem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frame_problem)

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#383

Post by sangnoir »

pc86 wrote: post #351
DanBC wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The racism comes from saying "We recognise human faces" and then not recognising a significant proportion of humans.

That's not racism, that's laziness. Or perhaps just being a bad engineer, if you want to be more cynical about it. It's not that hard to find both conscious and subconscious examples of systemic or individual racism. Engineers taking the easy path with webcam facial recognition is probably not a good one and serves only to give more fuel to those who claim people jump to the racism cry too quickly.

> That's not racism, that's laziness. Or perhaps just being a bad engineer, if you want to be more cynical about it.

I wasn't ready to admit the genius of the show before, but I am now: what you said is quite close to a line from the same episode (said by the sociopathic boss, Veronica) when told by the protagonist that the sensors were effectively racist "[...] it's actually the opposite of racist, because it's not targeting black people. It's just ignoring them. [company] insist the worst people can call it is "indifferent.""

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#384

Post by daxelrod »

zby wrote: post #262
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…

I have noticed that people following machine orders is also used by corporations to force customers to give up on their rights. I have a minor dispute with one of our communication providers and it is a real nightmare - according to the law I have the right, but the system does not include it and people don't know what to do in this case. Some other people higher up just wait until I give up.

A leasing agent for my apartment put the wrong (slightly cheaper) rent amount on our lease, and only realized as we were moving in, well after all parties had signed.

She told us we needed to sign a corrected lease because there was no way to make the rent billing system charge us the lower amount.

We explained to her that the building’s legal obligations trumped what their computer would do. They figured out how to change the amount in their billing system.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#385

Post by wowtip »

c12 wrote: post #327
lmm wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't. Blindly following orders from humans has much the same results.

When the orders come from a human then there is someone who is ultimatly responsible, someone to put through the courts, someone to throw in jail. When the orders come from a computer. Will any of that happen, will there be someone responsible?

"It looks like the devs didn't do their job properly..."?

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#386

Post by icebraining »

philliphaydon wrote: post #133
terlisimo wrote: post #18

I had a sort-of related experience with PayPal where the machine said "No." I've been using it for at least 10 years at that point. What I did was try to pay for some cheap VPS hosting in Italy. The transaction was denied. I thought there was some problem with my CC, so I immediately tried to do a $1 transaction with some other company and it went without a hitch. So I contacted PayPal support about it and the next d…

I tried to delink my bank account from PayPal, so I could close it, and it refused cos I apparently owed $1.27 even tho my balance said $0. I tried to add a credit card but it was flagged as suspicious. Contacting PayPal they said I needed to go into the bank and put some money, my account so PayPal could take it. But I had already closed the bank account. After PayPal refusing to help. I resolved it by opening a new…

Curious, why did you care? I think I'd just leave the account open.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#387

Post by Dylan16807 »

dagw wrote: post #360
pc86 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not racism, that's laziness. Or perhaps just being a bad engineer, if you want to be more cynical about it. It's not that hard to find both conscious and subconscious examples of systemic or individual racism. Engineers taking the easy path with webcam facial recognition is probably not a good one and serves only to give more fuel to those who claim people jump to the racism cry too quickly.

That's not racism, that's laziness. If the system had failed for with people with different hair color rather than skin color would they have been equally lazy?

If it was hitting the same percentages? Very likely yes.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#388

Post by cdubzzz »

zby wrote: post #262
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…

I have noticed that people following machine orders is also used by corporations to force customers to give up on their rights. I have a minor dispute with one of our communication providers and it is a real nightmare - according to the law I have the right, but the system does not include it and people don't know what to do in this case. Some other people higher up just wait until I give up.

Contact the FCC: https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us

My wife is a victim of the OPM breach and had someone apply for (and in some cases open) numerous accounts with her data. One of those accounts was with T-Mobile and after three months of phone calls and strongly worded bills we filed an FCC complaint. A T-Mobile rep called us two days later and the issue was resolved (or so it seems anyway, haven’t heard anything in the past few weeks).

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#389

Post by skywhopper »

pc86 wrote: post #351
DanBC wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The racism comes from saying "We recognise human faces" and then not recognising a significant proportion of humans.

That's not racism, that's laziness. Or perhaps just being a bad engineer, if you want to be more cynical about it. It's not that hard to find both conscious and subconscious examples of systemic or individual racism. Engineers taking the easy path with webcam facial recognition is probably not a good one and serves only to give more fuel to those who claim people jump to the racism cry too quickly.

But laziness around something that dispropotionately impacts people based on their race is racist. If you know your system has a harder time training against non-white faces, and you choose to train it only against white faces to be lazy, that's still explicitly racist. This isn't even a case of negligent racism ("oh well I didn't know my system wouldn't work for people with darker skin because only my white coworkers tried it out"). The example here is a case of the engineer explicitly deciding to avoid the harder case of darker skinned individuals, knowing that the results would be poorer for those individuals, and thinking it doesn't matter if the system doesn't work well for people with darker skin. That is explicit racism.

Re: The Machine Fired Me

#390

Post by Dylan16807 »

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.

Note the irony in saying the pharmacist should have trusted the machine while ignoring the established rules.
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