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Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

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Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also influences hiring decisions, rental applications, loans, credit scoring, social media feeds, government services and even what news or information we see when we search online. I think, more frighteningly, the potential for it to make decisions on insurance claims and medical care.

There is an underlying assumption there that is certainly incorrect. So many stupid comments about AI boil down to "humans are incredibly good at X, we can't risk having AI do it". Humans are bad at all manner of things. There are all kinds of bad human decisions being made in insurance, health care, construction, investing, everywhere. It's one big joke to suggest we are good at all this stuff.

Bad decisions in insurance are, roughly speaking, on the side of over-approving.

AI will perform tirelessly and consistently at maximizing rejections. It will leave no stone unturned in search for justifications why a claim ought to be denied.

Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#73
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fear is that by delegating to an ai, there's no recourse if the outcome for the person is undesirable (correctly or not). What is needed from the AI is a trace/line-of-reasoning to which a decision is derived. Like a court judgement, which has explanations attached. This should be available (or be made as part of the decision documentation).

That's also a silly idea. Companies get sued all the time. There is recourse. If you run a bank that runs an AI model to make decisions on home loans and the effect is no black people get a loan, you are going to find yourself in court the exact same way as if you hire loan officers who are a bunch of racists. There is no difference. It is available to the entity running inference. Every single token and all the prob…

Companies pretty much never get sued by anyone who is from a low income or otherwise disadvantaged group. It has to be pro bono work, or a big class action suit.

Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#74
post #31

> Imagine applying for a job, only to find out that an algorithm powered by artificial intelligence (AI) rejected your resume before a human even saw it The article says this like it's a new problem. Automated resume screening is a long established practice at this point. That it'll be some LLM doing the screening instead of a keyword matcher doesn't change much. Although, it could be argued that an LLM would better…

> It also influences hiring decisions, rental applications, loans, credit scoring, social media feeds, government services and even what news or information we see when we search online. I think, more frighteningly, the potential for it to make decisions on insurance claims and medical care.

I know someone in this space. The insurance forms are processed first-pass with AI or ML (I forget which). Then the remainder are processed by humans in Viet Nam. This is not for the USA.

I've also vaguely heard of a large company that provides just this as a service -- basically a factory where insurance claims are processed by humans here in VN, in one of the less affluent regions. I recall they had some minor problems with staffing as it's not a particularly pleasant job (it's very boring). On the other hand, the region has few employment opportunities, so perhaps it's good for some people too.

I'm not sure which country this last one is processing forms for. It may, or may not be the USA.

I don't really have an opinion to offer -- I just thought you might find that interesting.

Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's also a silly idea. Companies get sued all the time. There is recourse. If you run a bank that runs an AI model to make decisions on home loans and the effect is no black people get a loan, you are going to find yourself in court the exact same way as if you hire loan officers who are a bunch of racists. There is no difference. It is available to the entity running inference. Every single token and all the prob…

Companies pretty much never get sued by anyone who is from a low income or otherwise disadvantaged group. It has to be pro bono work, or a big class action suit.

Completely wrong. Companies get sued by various government agencies all the time. The FTC, DOJ, SEC, EPA, CFPB, probably others I can't think of.

Even if you were right, AI doesn't change any of it - companies are liable.

Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#78
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fear is that by delegating to an ai, there's no recourse if the outcome for the person is undesirable (correctly or not). What is needed from the AI is a trace/line-of-reasoning to which a decision is derived. Like a court judgement, which has explanations attached. This should be available (or be made as part of the decision documentation).

But also an appeals process where it can be escalated to a real person. There should be nothing where any kind of AI system can make a final decision. I think the safest would be for a reviewer in an appeal process to even not have any access to any of the AI's decision or reasoning, since if the incorrect decision was based on hallucinated information, a reviewer might be biased to think it's true even if it was ima…

> There should be nothing where any kind of AI system can make a final decision.

This would forbid things like spam filters.

Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It also influences hiring decisions, rental applications, loans, credit scoring, social media feeds, government services and even what news or information we see when we search online. I think, more frighteningly, the potential for it to make decisions on insurance claims and medical care.

There is an underlying assumption there that is certainly incorrect. So many stupid comments about AI boil down to "humans are incredibly good at X, we can't risk having AI do it". Humans are bad at all manner of things. There are all kinds of bad human decisions being made in insurance, health care, construction, investing, everywhere. It's one big joke to suggest we are good at all this stuff.

AI will be used to justify the existence of bad decisions. Now that we have an excuse in the form of "AI" we don't need to fix or own our bad decision mistakes.

Re: Avoiding AI is hard – but our freedom to opt out must be protected

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But also an appeals process where it can be escalated to a real person. There should be nothing where any kind of AI system can make a final decision. I think the safest would be for a reviewer in an appeal process to even not have any access to any of the AI's decision or reasoning, since if the incorrect decision was based on hallucinated information, a reviewer might be biased to think it's true even if it was ima…

> There should be nothing where any kind of AI system can make a final decision. This would forbid things like spam filters.

You never look into your spam folder?
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