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Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

politico.eu

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Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#101

Post by BlargMcLarg »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #78
mschuster91 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do people need to receive hundreds of thousands of Euros for children daycare? It's not about "daycare", it is about assisting families in the (massive) expenses that raising a child incurs. Why? Because unlike the American pension system which is mostly backed by the stock market, European pension systems depend on young and healthy workers to pay the pensions of the current pensioner generation. Obviously thi…

>Why? Because unlike the American pension system which is mostly backed by the stock market, European pension systems depend on young and healthy workers to pay the pensions of the current pensioner generation. Which IMHO the European pension system is massively flawed as it's basically a Ponzi scheme that requires more and more people to keep the system going, more people that will consume more resources and need mo…

The real problem is everyone wants to rely on the current working population, especially the middle class, despite it being evident the middle class is doing progressively worse. You don't need to pump the population numbers year after year if retirees can accept they'll be a little worse off relative to the younger generation compared to their ancestors, for example. Instead, many retirees expect the younger generations to carry the full burden and figure it out on their own.

Add to that several other problems in NL in particular, and you have a recipe for disaster. One of the main reasons people with a median income have huge trouble finding a decent place to live.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#102

Post by cjrp »

falcolas wrote: post #100
Kaotique wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand one of the main triggers for this whole operation was the mass fraud by people from Bulgaria who netted a lot of benefits by gaming the system. They traveled to the Netherlands, applied for benefits and then went back to Bulgaria and used Dutch bank accounts and debit cards to get the cash. The tax office never wanted that to happen again and started this program to find fraudsters but ended up clas…

Ironically, this is one of the reasons I like the idea of UBI - you can't defraud the government when they're giving money to everyone. Most of the budget required to detect and enforce fraud vanishes. Secondary effects (and their costs), such as the one presented in this story, go away. It's not that simple, I know. But spending so much on bureaucratic red tape and fraud prevention is something that feels really sil…

Why would the required budget vanish? People are greedy. Why claim UBI for just you when you could claim for your fictitious family of 6?

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#103

Post by photochemsyn »

wallaBBB wrote: post #4

By reading, seems that the algorithm is just a scapegoat used in the title. This is racial discriminations dating way back, purposely introduced in the algorithm, and supported for 6 years. > Having dual nationality was marked as a big risk indicator, as was a low income. >In 2020, Trouw and another Dutch news outlet, RTL Nieuws revealed that the tax authorities also kept secret blacklists of people for two decades,…

People across the government-corporate spectrum are now fully aware that if they train 'self-learning algorithms' on biased data sets then those algorithms will adopt those biases. Such people seem to believe they can then get away with blaming the algorithm for the outcome while avoiding any legal responsibility themselves.

On the positive side more and more people are generally aware of how this works. Criminal investigators need to look at the people who selected the datasets that were used to train the algorithms, they're the ones who bear responsibilty.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#104

Post by gsliepen »

Another issue that contributed to this scandal is that the rules for benefits (not just social benefits) are often such that you have to request it up front at the beginning of the year, but if at the end of the year it turns out that your situation changed midway and you no longer had the (full) right to the benefit, you have to pay it back along with a fine. It's really easy to not be aware of this.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#105

Post by Jensson »

croes wrote: post #92
chekibreki wrote: post #14

I hate how the correlation between income/country of origin and fraud probability is discarded as „racist“ by at least Amnesty International. Maybe we should first do a correlation and causality analysis and see what it yields instead of closing our eyes because of PC?

So what could cause a causality between income/country of origin and fraud probability? Is fraud genetic? I don't think so, so it's only a correlation at most.

Unintentional fraud is probably way higher among immigrants, it is hard to avoid "fraud" when filling in forms if you don't understand all the rules, even worse if the form isn't even in your native language.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#106

Post by Cthulhu_ »

eesmith wrote: post #17
jacquesm wrote: post #2

This scandal and the issues at the dutch tax office runs much deeper than just this one set of issues, they also maintained illegal lists of 'potential fraudulent people' on which 100's of thousands of people that had done nothing wrong, such as having the 'wrong' surname. It's rotten to the core and to date there have been zero consequences for the perps and the damage continues to pile up. Our government has fallen…

It's shocking to read, and reminds me of the British Post Office scandal. A €3.7 million + €2.75 million fines are a slap-on-the wrist for what happened. Even €30,000/case seems a pittance compared to its effects on people. It mentions there were "secret blacklists of people for two decades" and that "authorities [were] hiding information or misleading the parliament about the facts". I don't see how regulating algor…

On top of these fines they have to compensate and pay damages to everyone involved though, they've reserved €1.3 billion for that. The issue affected 30.000 parents, 70.000 children; there were 8000 divorces.

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toeslagenaffaire has a lot of information, but it's in Dutch; the English version of this article isn't as fleshed out.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#107

Post by falcolas »

cjrp wrote: post #102
falcolas wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically, this is one of the reasons I like the idea of UBI - you can't defraud the government when they're giving money to everyone. Most of the budget required to detect and enforce fraud vanishes. Secondary effects (and their costs), such as the one presented in this story, go away. It's not that simple, I know. But spending so much on bureaucratic red tape and fraud prevention is something that feels really sil…

Why would the required budget vanish? People are greedy. Why claim UBI for just you when you could claim for your fictitious family of 6?

At least here in the US, even children have tax IDs. I don't think it would vanish completely, but it makes it a much smaller issue when all you have look for double-submitted tax IDs instead of running heuristics.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#108

Post by peoplefromibiza »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #78
mschuster91 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why do people need to receive hundreds of thousands of Euros for children daycare? It's not about "daycare", it is about assisting families in the (massive) expenses that raising a child incurs. Why? Because unlike the American pension system which is mostly backed by the stock market, European pension systems depend on young and healthy workers to pay the pensions of the current pensioner generation. Obviously thi…

>Why? Because unlike the American pension system which is mostly backed by the stock market, European pension systems depend on young and healthy workers to pay the pensions of the current pensioner generation. Which IMHO the European pension system is massively flawed as it's basically a Ponzi scheme that requires more and more people to keep the system going, more people that will consume more resources and need mo…

> Which IMHO the European pension system is massively flawed as it's basically a Ponzi scheme

flawed, maybe, it is actually been good for people that strted working in the 50s-60s, but a Ponzi scheme?

I don't see the connection.

Most pension systems in Europe are in balance and have no problem paying the pensions, the only real problem is that the population is growing older but people get their first job much later in life and the age of retirement is not advancing at the same rate of the aging of the population.

Many pensions in my country are contributing to the economy of the family, so they are not going into the pockets of some old grumpy grandparent that lives on the shoulders of the younger generations and spend 9 months/year cruising the Mediterranean sea, having breakfast in Venice, lunch in Split and dinner in Crete.

> real-este which governments and banks have turned into a speculation vehicle

real-estate is mostly a cost in Europe, unless you have a shitload of money.

Re: Dutch scandal serves as a warning for Europe over risks of using algorithms

#110

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

rowanG077 wrote: post #64

I'm dutch and this really is disgusting. But you have to understand that the Dutch population has no real problem with this. The exact same political parties were elected a few months after this scandal. It's just democracy really.

Probably because most Dutch people assume shit like this can't/won't happen to them so it's no biggie that the lives of 5 families were ruined. Even less of an issues for them if some of those families affected were immigrants and not Dutch natives.
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