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

Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

461–470 of 605 posts

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#461

Post by throw16180339 »

nox101 wrote: post #383
jiggawatts wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s so bizarre to me that this uniquely US phenomenon of for-profit-middlemen inserted into the healthcare system has resulted in an adverserial relationship between the sick person and the “healthcare provider”. I put that air quotes because insurance companies don’t actually provide health care. They provide insurance. That’s a financial product, not a medical one.

in Japan where the government sets the prices, dentists do things over 3 visits that dentists in other places would do in 1 because then they can bill the government set price 3 times instead of one

No system is perfect, but Japanese healthcare administrative costs are under 2% as compared to 30+% in the US.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#462

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

TheNewsIsHere wrote: post #137
mupuff1234 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't fathom how anyone thought this was a sensible thing. It's so bad I have to wonder if there's a different angle here, maybe they think that releasing something so terribly bad will make it easier when they release something less comically bad? Idk.

I find myself generally wondering the same thing about half the things coming out of SV over the past several years. I have worked with competent product organizations. I know they exist. A few even exist in SV. But for some reason the largest players have just absolutely lost the plot beyond what can get them to favorable quarterly earnings, and that game eventually and fairly consistently doesn’t end well in the lo…

Obligatory PA comic: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2025/01/03/the-mirror-d-h...

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#463

Post by brigandish »

6ix8igth wrote: post #456
IG_Semmelweiss wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is coming and there's a very simple fix. Make healthcare insurance be actual insurance: as in, not a gateway to treatment conditions that are entirely lifestyle driven. Once patients are responsible for the bill and the large middle layer admin crud is taken off the table, medical inflation almost disappears. Take this example of a for-profit facility vs non-profit hospitals [1] Ideally this happens once environ…

How do you delineate between conditions that are "lifestyle driven" and not? When you develop a problem with your body it doesn't come with a receipt listing the cause. I've personally had postural issues that were for many years simply attributed to poor discipline. It later turned out that I have a connective tissue disorder that was destroying the joints in my body. All you I can see your proposition doing is givi…

Medical authorities make a list, and people applying for insurance answer lifestyle questions like "do you smoke?", "do you exercise?" etc and they have an initial exam.

It's not that hard. In the example you've given you could sue the doctors for misdiagnosis, or if research showed that a condition had been mislabelled, people would receive compensation. It doesn't seem any more onerous than any of the other negotiations over conditions and treatments that go on in any medical industry and legislature anywhere in the world.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#464

Post by sonofhans »

baxtr wrote: post #357
sonofhans wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's something essentially wrong with Meta and Google where they can do tech but not products anymore. I'd argue it's because the honest human desire that drives a product dies or is refined out of initiatives by the time it gets through the optimization process of their org structure. This is a really nice insight. I hadn’t put it together this way before. It’s similar to design-by-committee, or movie script-by…

I wonder why so few companies employ Pixar’s Brain Trust method. You get into a room with a bunch of key execs who are not part of your project and then they tear your product/movie/idea apart. You don’t have to implement any of their suggestions but since these are seasoned execs they see flaws readily. The key is that the process encourages candid feedback without hierarchy or defensiveness. This goes on for a coup…

Oh, I can think of very few exec I’ve worked with in tech who would willingly expose their team to public criticism, for fear that it would blow back on them. I’ve seen execs pay heavy prices for a team making a mistake in public. It’s stupid, but some orgs run that way.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#465

Post by pianoben »

rsynnott wrote: post #88

Do they not have anyone sensible left in the room? Like, you’d expect that at some point someone would have said ‘these are comically terrible, we cannot allow them to see the light of day’.

We're "all in on AI" at my job, and lots of people are drinking the koolaid. I regularly see design docs that are almost entirely written by ChatGPT, code implementing those designs written by copilot/cursor/chatgpt, and reviews done by the same. There are features deployed for which practically no human consideration was given.

I'd be very willing to believe something like this happens at Facebook, too.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#467

Post by nradov »

josephg wrote: post #417
jopsen wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With a socialized healthcare system the system would have delays and you'd get the screening every 2.5 years, even if it was scheduled for every 2 years. Because of wait lists. To be fair, it's impossible to know of it matters :) I moved back to Europe from the US. And I can certainly feel that healthcare is slower, less eager to jump and investigate everything. But on the other hand, in the US you most certainly ris…

I live in Australia, and I don’t pay for private health insurance. Last year after travelling to Egypt I ended up in hospital with some gut related issue. I was let straight in from the emergency room. The doctors were great. I stayed overnight in one of the wards hooked up to machines and all that. I was discharged the next day. I didn’t pay a cent. I didn’t even see a bill. I don’t think they made one. I keep heari…

Pretty much all developed countries do fairly well on rapid access to emergency care. The queues are more of an issue with elective care. Socialized healthcare systems generally impose artificial supply limits to hold down costs, which is why we often see affluent Canadians come to the USA as medical tourists to skip the queue for certain procedures like MRI scans. While socialized systems might be better overall, there are certain drawbacks.

Outside of certain screenings, there is no proven benefit to yearly physical exams for healthy adults. It's a waste of resources and doesn't improve patient outcomes. Some people seem to want those annual exams, but they aren't justified on an evidence-based medicine basis.

https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/a-checkup-for-the-checku...

https://www.healthcare.gov/coverage/preventive-care-benefits...

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#468

Post by brigandish »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #390
xdfgh1112 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get this feeling a lot. For example the UK typically has unlimited paid sick days for salaried jobs, while I have heard of US employees pooling together and "donating" sick days to someone. The UK has a ton of benefits for the sick, unemployed, single mothers, carers etc. in the US I am sure those exist but I get the sense that charity is supposed to play more of a role.

[flagged]

They don't exist in the UK either, what company would offer unlimited sick days? Getting a job at those companies would represent a lottery win.

Re: Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles

#470

Post by 6ix8igth »

brigandish wrote: post #463
6ix8igth wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you delineate between conditions that are "lifestyle driven" and not? When you develop a problem with your body it doesn't come with a receipt listing the cause. I've personally had postural issues that were for many years simply attributed to poor discipline. It later turned out that I have a connective tissue disorder that was destroying the joints in my body. All you I can see your proposition doing is givi…

Medical authorities make a list, and people applying for insurance answer lifestyle questions like "do you smoke?", "do you exercise?" etc and they have an initial exam. It's not that hard. In the example you've given you could sue the doctors for misdiagnosis, or if research showed that a condition had been mislabelled, people would receive compensation. It doesn't seem any more onerous than any of the other negotia…

One can smoke and have a condition that is not caused by smoking, just like one can avoid exercising and have a condition that is not caused by insufficient exercise. You can't compile a list of facts about a person's life and use that to deterministicly attribute the cause of given conditions.

Does having one vice deny a person for life from having coverage for any disease which my potentially be caused by that vice? How long must a person partake in this vice to be denied coverage for life (i.e. is it okay to smoke for a few years then quit?)

Your example also has the problem of measuring the "lifestyle questions" being presented. How would you prove a person isn't exercising enough? If I know it will get me denied I'm not going to self report. We would need some sort of invasive "health audit" industry to insure compliance with insurance requirements. A physical exam at the start of insurance doesn't solve this, because like I said, the existing issues could have been caused by any number of problems.

Your dismissal of my specific example is silly - I don't want to sue a doctor for misdiagnosing a relatively common issue. Connective tissue disorders are not that rare, and I'm far from unique. Do you want to live in a society where we have to fight tooth and nail to get basic care for problems on the basis that we might have caused them ourselves?

Post reply on HN