>Reduce the Expected Benefit. This could be the chance to reverse America out of becoming a welfare state.
Stop corporate welfare first.
Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services
41–50 of 92 posts
Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services
#42I 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.
Now read the part where Voter Roll Purge request portal was flooded.
Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services
#43In 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…
>2. LLMs are empowering citizens to appeal in a social security landscape which often require expert-level knowledge to navigate, which is good.
Including Voter Roll Purge requests? That’s in the paper as well.
Child protective services has a tip line.
Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services
#44Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
Having older parents and watching what my grandparents went thru long before LLMs I just don't worry about the poor old state that much. The political zeitgeist is to always blame the "bad people", the "welfare queens" and the "undeserving" as the problem with the system. But never the complex system that's seemingly designed to benefit things like corporations extracting as much wealth from the system as they can. O…
>Having older parents and watching what my grandparents went thru long before LLMs I just don't worry about the poor old state that much.
You should worry more about your parents whose benefits are jeopardized by stress to the benefits system.
Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services
#45[deleted]
Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services
#46To me this is one of the reasons that UBI might not be most horrible idea. Sufficiently calibrated UBI would remove this useless work on both sides. Thus making whole system more efficient and maybe even cheaper.
Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 t…
Having older parents and watching what my grandparents went thru long before LLMs I just don't worry about the poor old state that much. The political zeitgeist is to always blame the "bad people", the "welfare queens" and the "undeserving" as the problem with the system. But never the complex system that's seemingly designed to benefit things like corporations extracting as much wealth from the system as they can. O…
>But never the complex system that's seemingly designed to benefit things like corporations extracting as much wealth from the system as they can.
What “system”? Are you talking about? Social security? How is social security designed to maximize corporate wealth extraction?
If you mean the more nebulous “system” (“the system, man”), or capitalism, etc. then you’re equivocating.
Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services
#48I 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…
TBH, most government bureaucracy is just pure overhead connected to a jobs program. A competent government, focused on delivering the services that citizens are actually entitled to, not on paying clerks or avoiding career-ending events at all costs, would do most of this digitally. And by digitally, I don't mean "you can fill the form online, maybe with some auto-fill and autocomplete suggestions for addresses", I m…
In my understanding when it comes to doling out benefits, it's not an overhead connected to a jobs program. The less eligible people use benefits, the less the government has to pay out benefits. It's strictly better for the government to make getting benefits as hard as possible.
Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services
#49The people who need this additional help to access water/power/internet/etc often have the most barriers to being able to complete the necessary steps to access benefits. This is a great use of the technology.
Re: Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services
#50I 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…
> What I’m particularly curious about is what the “endgame” of this looks like. Initially, I imagine we’ll start with LLMs on the consumer side debating LLMs on the service side
More data centers, less low-end lawyers, probably more pressure on the judicial system.