Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Keep your AI claims in check

ftc.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 308 posts

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#171

Post by palata »

Oxidation wrote: post #121
palata wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the trick is to get too big to fail status before gov't agencies can come shut you down. While avoiding getting bought by Elon \o/

Why would you want to avoid that? Get paid the GDP of Lithuania for a fairly stodgy messaging platform with a big question mark over how many real users there even are and then getting to look like a genius in comparison to the next guy's run at it sounds like a great deal to me.

Haha yes, if you are at the top level! If you are just a normal employee getting paid 2-3x more than what you would get if you were working in most other companies, probably it's less fun to get bullied, then fired, and then to get a more decent salary for your work.

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#172

Post by jsemrau »

civilized wrote: post #96
jsemrau wrote: post #68

We are working on an AI product in a highly regulated industry (Investing). Recently we have been experimenting using the GPT3 API as a Junior Equity Analyst. On an eyeball check the results of the technology are impressive. The problem is that there is no way to validate the feedback on scale. I.e., we can't receive statistics about the feedback from the API. In contrast, for our own Entity Recognition models we can…

GPT is a voluble, entertaining bullshitter that is occasionally correct. It is not reliable, and for now, it cannot be made reliable. It is a very impressive toy, but still just a toy for now.

For now GPT is creating the filler content that moves the Web in 2023. But, given the results I have seen from our PoC's, it can do more and will do more in the future.

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#173

Post by genocidicbunny »

dcow wrote: post #156
genocidicbunny wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you actually go read the linked article, it's pretty clearly spelled out: The FTC has decades of experience enforcing three laws important to developers and users of AI: Section 5 of the FTC Act. The FTC Act prohibits unfair or deceptive practices. That would include the sale or use of – for example – racially biased algorithms. Fair Credit Reporting Act. The FCRA comes into play in certain circumstances where an…

If you actually go read the FTC act, section 5 is about preventing unfair methods of competition. It's massive stretch to interpret that as "deploying an unfair consumer algorithm".

You missed the second half of 15 USC § 45.a.1:

(1) Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful.

Now, IANAL, but it seems to me that the example the FTC gave about racially biased 'AI' would fall well under the second clause.

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#174

Post by danielmarkbruce »

JoshCole wrote: post #165
danielmarkbruce wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trade_Commission The first section is a decent summary. Blog posts making casual threats about AI claims is a long way from appropriate. There are places for formality, and the law is one of them. There are serious people quitting the FTC over current leadership, claiming they engaged in behavior that is wildly overstepping their legal authority.

> The first section is a decent summary. I read the first section and it doesn't seem to support your claim. In particular, it claims they have a mandate to protect consumers and links to another wiki entry on that topic. Within that wiki entry protection against misleading statements is mentioned as an aspect of protection of consumers. This seems to refute your claim of overreach, because in the blog post related t…

The first point was just pointing to a summary of their purpose, because the comment above had asked about their purpose. It wasn't in support of any claim - to be abundantly clear, the FTC is supposed to be regulating deceptive practice in business.

The second was a statement that an informal blog post threatening citizens is inappropriate, and that the FTC has been accused by by insiders of engaging in inappropriate behavior on several fronts. Two FTC commissioners resigned recently (one making strong claims of illegal and inappropriate behavior in a WSJ oped), and the FTC's recent case against Meta was seen as an overstep by the relevant court.

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#176

Post by mathgenius »

akersten wrote: post #52
flatline wrote: post #36

“It’s an ambiguous term with many possible definitions.” “Does the product actually use AI at all? If you think you can get away with baseless claims…” Last I checked basic optimization techniques like simulated annealing and gradient descent - as well as a host of basic statistical tools - are standard parts of an introductory AI textbook. I’ve been on the receiving end of government agency enforcement (SEC) and it…

Yeah, it's pretty laughable that the source they link to for those "possible definitions" right away says this: > AI is defined in many ways and often in broad terms. The variations stem in part from whether one sees it as a discipline (e.g., a branch of computer science), a concept (e.g., computers performing tasks in ways that simulate human cognition), a set of infrastructures (e.g., the data and computational pow…

> Deterministic if/then statements

This was the pinnacle of AI in the 80's. They called them "expert systems".

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#177

Post by dcow »

genocidicbunny wrote: post #173
dcow wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you actually go read the FTC act, section 5 is about preventing unfair methods of competition. It's massive stretch to interpret that as "deploying an unfair consumer algorithm".

You missed the second half of 15 USC § 45.a.1: (1) Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful. Now, IANAL, but it seems to me that the example the FTC gave about racially biased 'AI' would fall well under the second clause.

Not a lawyer either, but take a look at this one's definition of "in or affecting commerce" under the Business Activities, Sometimes section:

http://www.stephenson-law.com/news/“-or-affecting-commerce”-...

> The proper inquiry is not whether a contractual relationship existed between the parties, but rather whether the defendant’s allegedly deceptive acts affected commerce.

I'm really not sure that "gave different demographics of users different responses to optimize product satisfaction" is considered in any way an "unfair or deceptive" practice "in or affecting commerce".

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#178

Post by NateEag »

arionhardison wrote: post #58

I would like to know how others are dealing with this. I am making a public health system and to deal with this I simply show results to the clinician or social worker etc... and have them manually approve the result before its applied to an end users protocol.

Your description sounds like you're training your reviewers to rubberstamp the system's results as correct.

That is a horrible outcome.

By the time something comes along they really need to question, they'll already have adapted to the system being pretty good and they won't even notice there was an issue.

This problem is endemic to ML systems and cannot be patched away, so far as I can tell. We need fundamentally different approaches to avoid this pit.

Please make sure decision-makers understand this unavoidable gotcha their ML systems must necessarily have.

Re: Keep your AI claims in check

#179

Post by iForgotMyPW »

civilized wrote: post #96
jsemrau wrote: post #68

We are working on an AI product in a highly regulated industry (Investing). Recently we have been experimenting using the GPT3 API as a Junior Equity Analyst. On an eyeball check the results of the technology are impressive. The problem is that there is no way to validate the feedback on scale. I.e., we can't receive statistics about the feedback from the API. In contrast, for our own Entity Recognition models we can…

GPT is a voluble, entertaining bullshitter that is occasionally correct. It is not reliable, and for now, it cannot be made reliable. It is a very impressive toy, but still just a toy for now.

[flagged]
Post reply on HN