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I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

nytimes.com

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Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#301

Post by vertex-four »

neodymiumphish wrote: post #270
vertex-four wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The equivalent of buying advertising time in specific TV shows with a known audience is... buying adverts on specific Youtube channels with a known audience. Funnily, a lot of Youtubers now perform advertising of this sort - I'm sure you've seen the VPN ads. This, like TV, doesn't require tracking of individual people who haven't consented to such.

> This, like TV, doesn't require tracking of individual people who haven't consented to such. That's a stretch. How do you think they determine any information about the "known" audience? Obviously, they do all sorts of research to determine more about the audiences watching certain shows and channels, likely by sifting through social media, show reviews (IMDB, etc), and elsewhere to determine who's watching what sho…

The difference is that if I don’t want to let anyone know that I watch My Little Pony... I don’t have to! There’s no little black box connected to my TV that tells an advertiser that I’m watching it without asking me.

I can also have a discussion with my friends about My Little Pony and how amazing the last episode was without an algorithm picking that up, unless I publish it to the world or explicitly send it to the advertiser.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#302

Post by momokoko »

reggieband wrote: post #253

There is a scene at the beginning of the movie Brazil [1] where a literal bug falls into a tele-type, causes an error that starts a chain reaction that frames the events of the movie. The bug is a metaphor in the movie, just some nice visual story-telling to indicate how errors in automated processes can have unintended consequences. I honestly fear that entire lives will be ruined by AI systems mis-analyzing some da…

> AI systems mis-analyzing some data and locking people out from education, work, credit and health opportunities.

College admissions? Resume screens? Mortgage applications?

We already have that at scale. There wouldn't be so much money in gaming those things if the AI wasn't doing such a poor job. You likely just happen to be someone that isn't on the wrong side of it.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#303

Post by vehementi »

glofish wrote: post #280
lisper wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the magnitude of it matters. The cost to consumers of financial corruption runs into the many billions of dollars. > There are plenty of small banks and credit unions out there thus the point that you cannot open a bank is not quite valid. I did not say that you couldn't open a bank. I said that if you tried you would see firsthand evidence of the corruption of the system. The problem is not that the rules are oner…

> The problem is that the rules are not applied evenly and transparently. Of course not. Never are, again you are not saying much here. Also with the billions of wasted dollars. Of course, but that is a natural consequence of dealing with immense scope - it is going to be very inefficient and stupid. Still a far cry from actual corruption. I feel that people tossing around the word corruption don't really understand…

You can claim that people tossing around corruption don't understand it... but you in the first place don't understand the scenario OP is even describing (as they're unable to provide details, you couldn't possibly be making an accurate judgment). So it is far fetched for you to confidently claim OP is misusing corruption etc. here.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#304

Post by rexpop »

falcor84 wrote: post #282
reggieband wrote: post #253

There is a scene at the beginning of the movie Brazil [1] where a literal bug falls into a tele-type, causes an error that starts a chain reaction that frames the events of the movie. The bug is a metaphor in the movie, just some nice visual story-telling to indicate how errors in automated processes can have unintended consequences. I honestly fear that entire lives will be ruined by AI systems mis-analyzing some da…

But is this really about AI? Almost all aspects of our lives are already controlled by the enormously complex soulless machines of bureaucracy we call firms and governments. Is there any essential difference between a computer bug and a clerical error? If anything, I would assume the former is easier to fix.

You're right: this could very well be about Modernist systems incorporating racist, sexist, ableist paradigms into their rote performance.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#305

Post by garblegarble »

0xffff2 wrote: post #131
garblegarble wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My goal was to make certain that if it leaked, the overtyped expiry date should make it useless after a certain point, and the company name should make any company other than that one question the source. >As a side effect, it'd also clearly identify the source of any leaks - but that wasn't my primary goal. Wouldn't a malicious actor just add block text over your text saying "only for identity verification for Some…

I don't know how GP did it, but I would have made the text translucent and make sure it covered the entire image so that there's no easy way to obfuscated the watermark without also obfuscating the license itself.

Ahh, of course - I didn't think of that. Thanks, obvious now that you mention it :-)

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#306

Post by bradknowles »

temp626 wrote: post #286
reggieband wrote: post #253

There is a scene at the beginning of the movie Brazil [1] where a literal bug falls into a tele-type, causes an error that starts a chain reaction that frames the events of the movie. The bug is a metaphor in the movie, just some nice visual story-telling to indicate how errors in automated processes can have unintended consequences. I honestly fear that entire lives will be ruined by AI systems mis-analyzing some da…

Humans are not much better gatekeepers. Studies have shown that for example having certain name can be serious disadvantage when applying for work. Algorithms can be bad as well, but at least you can look into them to understand the reasons.

Maybe. They can also be inscrutable.

And that's just basic algorithms and regular human-written code.

Then you've got ML systems which are a whole 'nother level of inscrutable.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#307

Post by neotek »

brookside wrote: post #57
neotek wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As consumers, we all have “secret scores”: hidden ratings that determine how long each of us waits on hold when calling a business, whether we can return items at a store, and what type of service we receive. A low score sends you to the back of the queue; high scores get you elite treatment. Every so often, journalists lament these systems’ inaccessibility. They’re “largely invisible to the public,” The New York Tim…

Journalism is valuable, and it is a publication's decision to decide on how to pay for that journalistic work. I'm not ok with copying and pasting paywalled news articles verbatim on HN.

Well I am. If you need to paywall your content, paywall it properly, don't just slap a semi-opaque div over the top of it and beg for my email address.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#308

Post by causalmodels »

earthboundkid wrote: post #114
astura wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is already a big (and largely unaddressed) problem with the big 3 credit CRAs, if you know enough about a person you can very easily request their credit report and get the keys to the kingdom (so-to-speak) - everything you didn't already know. I mean, I already request credit reports for my husband without issue, for example (with his permission! - he finds it much easier to just ask me to do those things for h…

CRAs are a scam from top to bottom. A bank makes a lot of money, but in theory, it's doing an important job which benefits society. That job is independently assessing creditworthiness. Of course, it's hard to assess creditworthiness if you don't know if someone is making a lot of loans at different places. So, there needs to be a system for credit monitoring . But credit monitoring is not credit rating . Credit rati…

> Letting someone else do it undermines the whole purposes of the independent financial system.

Even small regional banks have their own internal credit rating algorithms. Credit ratings from CRAs are generally consumed either in aggregates (a buyer on the secondary markets wants a traunch with an average credit rating of X) or by less sophisticated parties such as landlords.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#309

Post by Sniffnoy »

momokoko wrote: post #302
reggieband wrote: post #253

There is a scene at the beginning of the movie Brazil [1] where a literal bug falls into a tele-type, causes an error that starts a chain reaction that frames the events of the movie. The bug is a metaphor in the movie, just some nice visual story-telling to indicate how errors in automated processes can have unintended consequences. I honestly fear that entire lives will be ruined by AI systems mis-analyzing some da…

> AI systems mis-analyzing some data and locking people out from education, work, credit and health opportunities. College admissions? Resume screens? Mortgage applications? We already have that at scale. There wouldn't be so much money in gaming those things if the AI wasn't doing such a poor job. You likely just happen to be someone that isn't on the wrong side of it.

> There wouldn't be so much money in gaming those things if the AI wasn't doing such a poor job.

This isn't true at all. When the process works well, those who it excludes often attempt to spend money to subvert it. There's no reason that interfering with the process should only happen when it's working poorly.

A simple example is the recent college admissions scandal. You often hear this scandal demonstrates that college admissions are just a way to let in rich people, but actually it demonstrates the opposite -- that the normal admissions process had (presumably correctly?) kept these people out and so they had to pay to subvert it.

Of course, you're not claiming that these things are just ways of separating the rich from the rest; just that they're messed up in some way or another. Which, if not very specific, seems broadly accurate. But the following claim isn't -- people on the losing end of a judgment are going to do their best to subvert that judgment whether it's correct or not, so one cannot infer much of anything about the judgment's correctness based on whether there's then an attempt at subverting it.

Re: I Got Access to My Secret Consumer Score

#310

Post by diminoten »

paulmd wrote: post #300
diminoten wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell are you talking about? I'm not libertarian or ranting, I'm saying this is a complex issue and the "LETS REGULATE IT" feels premature given how complex and subtle the issue is, and how hard laws are to change once they're on the books. Methinks you're projecting more than a little bit. Also your comment is some of the most toxic I've seen on HN in a little while, and I'm not exactly a ray of sunshine on…

I mean, you saw "regulations are written in blood because people died and resulted in them getting passed " and thought a proper response was "let's not have any regulations at all because they're hard to get rid of and slow business down" so you're at least taking the libertarian position, regardless of whether you identify as a libertarian. And no, nobody else has ever interpreted "regulations are written in blood"…

Honestly I didn't read this past the first two words, because I don't think a continued conversation with you will be productive.

Take care, have a good day!

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