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Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services

arxiv.org

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Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services

#21

Post by tayxreo »

jrockway wrote: post #9
Xcelerate wrote: post #7

I think this is probably a good thing. It’s not just public services, but any company that consumers have to deal with (in ways they don’t want to). Historically, only those with the most time, money, connections, and education have been able to extract benefits from these systems. E.g., if someone wants to fight an insurance claim being denied, they might need to hire an expensive lawyer or spend hours performing th…

Maybe there is an economic equalizer, but I feel like Fable is going to win more appeals than GLM 5.2, so perhaps not truly an equalizer. If the LLM you're using to run your appeal is better than the one your insurance company is using to process your appeal, then you have a better chance of winning. So we have an arms race type situation, and money is always good in arms races.

i agree with most of this, but for appeals and thing where there is a clear correct and fair answer, i think the models converge on the same answer regardless of level of intelligence (e.g., if you ask fable 5 and sonnet 5 what 2+2 is, you’ll get the same output)

Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services

#22

Post by dylan604 »

light_hue_1 wrote: post #11

"Flooding" implies some nefarious purpose. There's no evidence of that in this paper. Maybe these agents are finally giving people who could never find the time, resources, knowledge, etc. to engage with the system. "Public services are increasingly becoming more accessible with LLMs" How about that as the title? They also have zero evidence that this is because of LLMs. They just got some data related to volume, did…

"Flooding" could be less nefarious as in the number of requests have risen dramatically in a short period of time quite possibly overwhelming those that are tasked to deal with the requests. Most places have peaks and valleys and can staff appropriately. Having a sudden rise from something unexpected will overwhelm the normal staff. We can debate whether the lack of recognition of the upticks being intentional or not, but possibly the ignoring the uptick is the nefarious bit

Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services

#23

Post by mistrial9 »

CodingJeebus wrote: post #17
Xcelerate wrote: post #7

I think this is probably a good thing. It’s not just public services, but any company that consumers have to deal with (in ways they don’t want to). Historically, only those with the most time, money, connections, and education have been able to extract benefits from these systems. E.g., if someone wants to fight an insurance claim being denied, they might need to hire an expensive lawyer or spend hours performing th…

> So I suspect this will lead to a much more formally rigorous system with various “certificates” proving, e.g., that you lost your job or that a doctor has confirmed you have a disability. We're seeing how this plays out now in various states that have made their benefits systems nearly impossible to use, which helps them save money by not doling out benefits at all. Having helped some of my elder relatives try to a…

In California I have seen this occur

> various states that have made their benefits systems nearly impossible to use, which helps them save money by not doling out benefits at all

Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services

#24

Post by mistrial9 »

groestl wrote: post #4
jbirnick wrote: post #3

I don't understand why this is often portrayed negatively. In general it's important that people can defend their rights, and I find it great that LLMs can help a lot with that. One could introduce page/word/character limits, and note that the other side can use LLMs too to summarize/organize/extract. Overall I think it's great that LLMs now help me to understand and rightfully claim things from insurances, companies…

To be fair, the source mentions the upside ("Although improving Service accessibility is beneficial [...]") Seems like bureaucracy was added as a subtle way to introduce rate limits, and AI is challenging that mechanism.

> Seems like bureaucracy was added as NOT a subtle way to introduce rate limits

some teams get incentives when the total awards go down in a stable, badly run bureaucracy.. this is real

Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services

#25

Post by AlexandrB »

lensecat wrote: post #13

In my view there are three takeaways from this, all of which are correct: 1. Already strained government services need to bear increasing input, affecting waiting times and employee workloads, which is bad. 2. LLMs are empowering citizens to appeal in a social security landscape which often require expert-level knowledge to navigate, which is good. 3.This phenomenon says more about the complexity of our social securi…

You forgot:

2b. LLMs are empowering bad actors to exploit loopholes and collect benefits they're not entitled to.

The assumption from a lot of commenters seems to be that these are all legitimate claims and appeals, not a gold rush to get money from the government while the getting's good. In the end it will be the good faith actors that suffer - both those relying on these benefits to survive who will have to jump through more hoops to prove it and those funding the system with their taxes.

Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services

#27

Post by asdfman123 »

Xcelerate wrote: post #7

I think this is probably a good thing. It’s not just public services, but any company that consumers have to deal with (in ways they don’t want to). Historically, only those with the most time, money, connections, and education have been able to extract benefits from these systems. E.g., if someone wants to fight an insurance claim being denied, they might need to hire an expensive lawyer or spend hours performing th…

I think people using LLMs the right way is great and will democratize information.

However, most of us have experienced people wasting our time, sending us AI slop. People need to learn how to use the tools properly and respect other people's time.

Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services

#28

Post by pixl97 »

maccard wrote: post #14
Xcelerate wrote: post #7

I think this is probably a good thing. It’s not just public services, but any company that consumers have to deal with (in ways they don’t want to). Historically, only those with the most time, money, connections, and education have been able to extract benefits from these systems. E.g., if someone wants to fight an insurance claim being denied, they might need to hire an expensive lawyer or spend hours performing th…

I disagree - this doesn’t make it more accessible for people who don’t have the means, it drowns the receivers in bureaucracy and forces them to do orders of magnitude more work out of a lack of understanding. It’s debatable whether or not these systems are built in good faith to allow benefit claimants to appeal or not, but what will happen here is the appeals process will be clamped down on, hard and heavy. It’s th…

>it drowns the receivers in bureaucracy

Huh, the receivers in this case are the bureaucracy. The senders are the one that has to navigate said bureaucracy.

So, the entire thing is a wash. The systems are complex and confusing, many of them likely by design. Getting an appointment in some of them can take months. Knowing what you actually need can be daunting as quite often there is a byzantine set of requirements that depends on your exact situation and any missed information could take weeks or months to get another visit.

Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services

#29

Post by mips_avatar »

Xcelerate wrote: post #7

I think this is probably a good thing. It’s not just public services, but any company that consumers have to deal with (in ways they don’t want to). Historically, only those with the most time, money, connections, and education have been able to extract benefits from these systems. E.g., if someone wants to fight an insurance claim being denied, they might need to hire an expensive lawyer or spend hours performing th…

I hope it will force institutions to simplify entitlements. Right now the institutions can pretend like their kafkaesque system is fine because nobody manages to navigate the maze.

Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services

#30

Post by jrockway »

tayxreo wrote: post #21
jrockway wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe there is an economic equalizer, but I feel like Fable is going to win more appeals than GLM 5.2, so perhaps not truly an equalizer. If the LLM you're using to run your appeal is better than the one your insurance company is using to process your appeal, then you have a better chance of winning. So we have an arms race type situation, and money is always good in arms races.

i agree with most of this, but for appeals and thing where there is a clear correct and fair answer, i think the models converge on the same answer regardless of level of intelligence (e.g., if you ask fable 5 and sonnet 5 what 2+2 is, you’ll get the same output)

That's a good point. It will be interesting to see how it plays out.

In general, I do think this is positive. Companies love putting barriers in front of everything and maybe the AI arms race will result in "fine, you can have a button to cancel" or "fine, we'll approve your medically necessary claim without making you do an appeals dance for our entertainment".

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