They opitimized it by removing dead code etc. So I wonder if that could be fed back into the original laws to simplilfy them.
A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code
11–20 of 136 posts
Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code
#12> In France, income tax is computed from taxpayers' individual returns, using an algorithm that is authored, designed and maintained by the French Public Finances Directorate (DGFiP). This algorithm relies on a legacy custom language and compiler originally designed in 1990, which unlike French wine, did not age well with time. This interesting. When it comes to legacy code we think of COBOL and FORTRAN most of the t…
My entire industry (subset of healthcare) mostly uses a single application for 95% of our core business functions. That application is written in Visual FoxPro and is, predictably, pretty terrible. Obviously it isn't going to get better, either, but it'll be a decade or more before there's a serious competitor.
Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code
#13Translating legal texts to mathematical form is very interesting. It could decimate most legal jobs if a lawsuit can be converted to mathematical form and then 'executed' against the laws that are also in mathematical form. You get your judgement and the explanation as to how that conclusion was reached, all automatically. It could even cause headaches if contradictions in legal judgements are detected. It all relies…
Well technically (joke)... a decimation is 10%.
I agree. Very interesting. Realistically, paperwork & bureaucracy is an ideal target for automation. That said, every input that you feed an algorithm is legally debateable... Structuring your inputs to be both legal and optimal is more storytelling than mathematics. There's enough play in these "subjective" parts that results could be anything.
Still, having a major algorithmic in the mix changes the game.
The fact is, that while PCs have been (a) on every desk and (b) paperwork efficiency machines for the last 30 years... the total number of legal/accounting/hr/admin jobs has increased in this period.
The effects of technology/efficiency on "clerical" work is not predictable in the way it is on factories.
Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code
#14Translating legal texts to mathematical form is very interesting. It could decimate most legal jobs if a lawsuit can be converted to mathematical form and then 'executed' against the laws that are also in mathematical form. You get your judgement and the explanation as to how that conclusion was reached, all automatically. It could even cause headaches if contradictions in legal judgements are detected. It all relies…
IMO this is such an 'obvious' idea once you think about it that it will eventually happen. The law will go from written natural language to executable computer programs (formal languages). However a change of this mangnitude cannot happen quickly, (and might even be impossible to do peacefully). Abusing the "software is eating the world" analogy, we ain't seen nothing yet. Software is just barely opening its mouth.
There is no floating point representation for 'gross', 'egregious', or 'blatant'. At least not one that will be suitable in all cases.
Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code
#15Translating legal texts to mathematical form is very interesting. It could decimate most legal jobs if a lawsuit can be converted to mathematical form and then 'executed' against the laws that are also in mathematical form. You get your judgement and the explanation as to how that conclusion was reached, all automatically. It could even cause headaches if contradictions in legal judgements are detected. It all relies…
It's not possible to reduce all lawsuits to compact formulae. Part of the legal profession is in interpreting old laws in the modern context, for instance, which would take something close to a general AI. More broadly, reasoning about legal edge-cases needs a sophisticated understanding of the law and of the world. Also, jurors can't be replaced by software, as they must be 'peers' by definition.
I imagine it would be much easier to build a system to roughly estimate the odds of a lawsuit being successful, inputting salient features of the case and running the numbers, without deep reasoning about the particulars. I don't know if work is already being done on this but I wouldn't be surprised. A lot of money must ride on knowing which corporate law battles can be won.
Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code
#16Most of the French socio-fiscal system can be simulated in Python through https://github.com/openfisca/openfisca-france/.
Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO this is such an 'obvious' idea once you think about it that it will eventually happen. The law will go from written natural language to executable computer programs (formal languages). However a change of this mangnitude cannot happen quickly, (and might even be impossible to do peacefully). Abusing the "software is eating the world" analogy, we ain't seen nothing yet. Software is just barely opening its mouth.
There is no floating point representation for 'gross', 'egregious', or 'blatant'. At least not one that will be suitable in all cases.
Yes but you can do a what-if analysis based on the parameter $degree being equal to 'gross', 'egregious' or 'blatant'.
Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
IMO this is such an 'obvious' idea once you think about it that it will eventually happen. The law will go from written natural language to executable computer programs (formal languages). However a change of this mangnitude cannot happen quickly, (and might even be impossible to do peacefully). Abusing the "software is eating the world" analogy, we ain't seen nothing yet. Software is just barely opening its mouth.
There is no floating point representation for 'gross', 'egregious', or 'blatant'. At least not one that will be suitable in all cases.
Right on. Consider whether forcing someone to unlock their smartphone should constitute compelled self-incrimination. This is a problem that US courts have flip-flopped on. [0] How would an SMT solver derive answer? It can't. You'd need a general AI.
Even ignoring the subtleties of the real world that the ̶l̶a̶w̶ edit legal system must cope with, nuts-and-bolts legal concepts like mens rea can't be mapped to algebraic expressions.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/indiana-supreme-...
Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code
#19> In France, income tax is computed from taxpayers' individual returns, using an algorithm that is authored, designed and maintained by the French Public Finances Directorate (DGFiP). This algorithm relies on a legacy custom language and compiler originally designed in 1990, which unlike French wine, did not age well with time. This interesting. When it comes to legacy code we think of COBOL and FORTRAN most of the t…
My entire industry (subset of healthcare) mostly uses a single application for 95% of our core business functions. That application is written in Visual FoxPro and is, predictably, pretty terrible. Obviously it isn't going to get better, either, but it'll be a decade or more before there's a serious competitor.
I'm not near the space any longer (in a former life, the healthcare industry was a big customer of our computer systems). But a significant portion of healthcare in the US used to use a proprietary language called MUMPS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUMPS
Re: A Modern Compiler for the French Tax Code
#20Here's the source code of the implementation of the tax code: https://github.com/etalab/calculette-impots-m-source-code
The languages breakdown is interesting. It seems GitHub refuses to admit defeat and categorises the .m files into various other languages which use the extension (M, MATLAB, Objective-C, Mathematica and Mercury). I wonder if they use some sort of fuzzy ML solution for categorising them rather than conventional parsing.