Accountability sinks • Hacker News Board

Re: Accountability sinks

#101

Post by lucianbr » Sun, Oct 20, 2024, 7:18 AM UTC

melagonster wrote: post #96

lucianbr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the point revenge or fixing the problem? Fixing the algorithm to never do that again is easy. Or is the point to instill fear?

If algorithm can do some thing wrong, but nobody should be responsible for it, everyone will just hide their crimes under algorithm and replace it when someone find problem.

If a mechanical device does something wrong, are we in the same conundrum?

I don't see what the problem is. There's malice, there's negligence, and there's accident. We can figure out which it was, and act accordingly. Must we collapse these to a single situation with a single solution?

Re: Accountability sinks

#102

Post by lucianbr » Sun, Oct 20, 2024, 7:19 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #67

lucianbr wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the point revenge or fixing the problem? Fixing the algorithm to never do that again is easy. Or is the point to instill fear?

The point is that "accountability of an algorithm" is a category error.

That's reasonable. Let's just call it root cause analysis in this case.

The original point seemed to me to be "we can't use computers because they're not accountable". I say, we can, because we can do fault analysis and fix what is wrong. I won't say "we can hold them accountable", to avoid the category error.

Re: Accountability sinks

#103

Post by lazide » Sun, Oct 20, 2024, 7:21 AM UTC

noisy_boy wrote: post #98

lazide wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a way to fully automate a Brazil scenario. [ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_(1985_film) ] Since at least in that scenario, there were humans in the Bureaucracy that could (but didn’t particularly) feel bad. In this scenario, no humans need to be directly involved, which allows the scope and scale to be even more Dystopian.

Of all the various useless laws that keep getting enacted, one that guarantees that every company needs to have a phone number, manned by actual human(s) with organic intelligence, advertised prominently on their products/advertisements, never gets passed.

Because that would cost them money, instead of forcing people to find their own workarounds (or die).

Many parts of gov’t aren’t far off, and those are the really scary ones.

Re: Accountability sinks

#104

Post by lazide » Sun, Oct 20, 2024, 7:27 AM UTC

lucianbr wrote: post #99

lazide wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of accountability is to deter harmful activity by ensuring actions/decisions somewhere result in consequences for who are responsible for them. Those consequences can be good or bad, though it is often used to refer to bad. An algorithm has no concept of consequences (unless programmed to be aware of such), and the more plausibly whoever wrote it can deny knowledge of the resulting consequences, also the mo…

> The point of accountability is to deter harmful activity by ensuring actions/decisions somewhere result in consequences What I read is yes, the point is revenge. If I can offer you a different way of preventing harmful activity, apparently you're not interested. There has to be some unpleasant consequences inflicted, you insist on it. I think you should reconsider.

Every rule/boundary/structure needs both a carrot, and a stick, to continue to exist long term.

Ideally, the stick never gets used. We aren’t dealing with ideals, however, we have to deal with reality.

On any sufficiently large scale, an inability/lack of will to use the stick, results in wide scale malfeasance. Because other constrains elsewhere result in wide scale push to break those rules/boundaries/structures for competitive reasons.

No carrot, magnifies the need to use the stick, eh? And turns it into nothing but beatings. Which is not sustainable either.

It has nothing to do with revenge. But if it makes you feel more comfortable, go ahead and call it that.

It’s ensuring cause and effect get coupled usefully. And is necessary for proper conditioning, and learning. One cannot learn properly if there is no ‘failure’ consequence correct?

All you need to do to verify this is, literally, look around at the structures you see everywhere, and what happens when they are or are not enforced. (Aka accountability vs a lack of it).

Re: Accountability sinks

#105

Post by bjornsing » Sun, Oct 20, 2024, 7:32 AM UTC

BartjeD wrote: post #95

spit2wind wrote: post #93

This is a terrible example because it's simply not true: > Davies gives the example of the case of Dominion Systems vs Fox News, in which Fox News repeatedly spread false stories about the election. No one at Fox seems to have explicitly made a decision to lie about voting machines; rather, there was an implicit understanding that they had to do whatever it took to keep their audience numbers up. Rupert Murdoch conce…

I think the point of the citation is that there wasn't an original decision to lie about it. It happened without coordination and later on wasn't stopped by the people in management, either. It was number-2 all the way up.

So there were many decisions to lie about it, and the lying was condoned from the top.

Re: Accountability sinks

#106

Post by ben_w » Sun, Oct 20, 2024, 7:33 AM UTC

m463 wrote: post #76

rougka wrote: post #64

I remember experiencing this in one of the German airports/airlines and having that exact thought. It was this fully automated airport, where the checkin is self serviced and you only interact with computers. Eventually, when I inserted my boarding pass I had a printed piece of paper back that said that they had to change my seat from aisle to midseat I then tried to find someone to talk to the entire way, but comput…

Many businesses build walls around themselves like this. Hiding the customer service number. Making an FAQ that is missing the common but time-consuming questions. Chatbots instead of people. I remember when amazon sent me a package once, said it was delivered, but it was nowhere to be found. There was no way to get help. They did have an FAQ at the time that said to check in the bushes. What was annoying was the sea…

I've got an actual email address to a real business, but the humans* are struggling with the concept of "$company created the account with the wrong billing address, ignoring my agent who could have received it when my agent did contact $company, it's provably $company's fault that the bills were not received, so $company must tell me who this debt collector is and refund me for the late payment penalties and admit their own fault to the CRA".

* not that I could tell if they were LLMs

Re: Accountability sinks

#107

Post by larodi » Sun, Oct 20, 2024, 7:36 AM UTC

eloisius wrote: post #90

rougka wrote: post #64

I remember experiencing this in one of the German airports/airlines and having that exact thought. It was this fully automated airport, where the checkin is self serviced and you only interact with computers. Eventually, when I inserted my boarding pass I had a printed piece of paper back that said that they had to change my seat from aisle to midseat I then tried to find someone to talk to the entire way, but comput…

I had a similar experience in Germany about a year ago. Train stations are mostly self-service now. The ticket kiosk ate my €50 and promptly rebooted. It didn’t print a receipt or anything. The only human I could find was a security guard. He told me to call the number on a sticker on the machine. The person who answered couldn’t speak English. My €50 is out there somewhere but it would cost me more than that to trac…

That’s a sad experience and I would definitely try to chase them robots. Sadly even though German public transport fascinates with its ease of use and quality, though when it comes to human service you can find yourself in peculiar position. And particularly if you are not German and happen to be in one of those international cities there where Germans are fed up with visitor. You waive goodbye to your 50€ and keep a story to tell, that’s all.

Sadly I don’t expect this all to get any better with robots and LLms and thing. We will be crying to meet a human sooner than later, and my hope is this far cry will eventually get us to the dawn of new era when you actually have people in the loop, just for humanity’s sake.

Re: Accountability sinks

#108

Post by auggierose » Sun, Oct 20, 2024, 7:39 AM UTC

gregmac wrote: post #86

m463 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many businesses build walls around themselves like this. Hiding the customer service number. Making an FAQ that is missing the common but time-consuming questions. Chatbots instead of people. I remember when amazon sent me a package once, said it was delivered, but it was nowhere to be found. There was no way to get help. They did have an FAQ at the time that said to check in the bushes. What was annoying was the sea…

I just switched ISPs, and the new one has one of the most obnoxious phone processes I've ever interacted with. I go through the usual hoops: press 1 for English, "we detected an account linked to the number you're calling from, is that that you're calling about?" ... Press 1 for support, press 1 for Internet, "no outages detected in your area. Most problems can be solved by rebooting your modem. Press 1 if you want t…

Why did you switch? Can't have been their reputation for support.

Re: Accountability sinks

#109

Post by bryanrasmussen » Sun, Oct 20, 2024, 7:41 AM UTC

larodi wrote: post #107

eloisius wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had a similar experience in Germany about a year ago. Train stations are mostly self-service now. The ticket kiosk ate my €50 and promptly rebooted. It didn’t print a receipt or anything. The only human I could find was a security guard. He told me to call the number on a sticker on the machine. The person who answered couldn’t speak English. My €50 is out there somewhere but it would cost me more than that to trac…

That’s a sad experience and I would definitely try to chase them robots. Sadly even though German public transport fascinates with its ease of use and quality, though when it comes to human service you can find yourself in peculiar position. And particularly if you are not German and happen to be in one of those international cities there where Germans are fed up with visitor. You waive goodbye to your 50€ and keep a…

>my hope is this far cry will eventually get us to the dawn of new era

after the Butlerian Jihad.

Re: Accountability sinks

#110

Post by yetihehe » Sun, Oct 20, 2024, 7:41 AM UTC

gregmac wrote: post #86

m463 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many businesses build walls around themselves like this. Hiding the customer service number. Making an FAQ that is missing the common but time-consuming questions. Chatbots instead of people. I remember when amazon sent me a package once, said it was delivered, but it was nowhere to be found. There was no way to get help. They did have an FAQ at the time that said to check in the bushes. What was annoying was the sea…

I just switched ISPs, and the new one has one of the most obnoxious phone processes I've ever interacted with. I go through the usual hoops: press 1 for English, "we detected an account linked to the number you're calling from, is that that you're calling about?" ... Press 1 for support, press 1 for Internet, "no outages detected in your area. Most problems can be solved by rebooting your modem. Press 1 if you want t…

> (Never mind that I personally don't feel like I've ever had a modem/isp actually problem solved by rebooting)

I had problems solved several times by rebooting modem. One time it was "reboot modem and access point in proper order", me naively rebooting them both at the same time didn't help, only phone support solved this problem.

> Also, rebooting is offensive to me as a programmer.

Hmm, I might be desensitivised from too much programming in erlang. It's implied that your program will encounter bugs or strange data and parts WILL be restarted, better account for that and plan on what to do on restart of each small part at the start of writing your program.

> So, basically there doesn't seem to be any phone technical support (with a human), at all.

Because it's cheaper. Those who don't have support can offer lower prices. When people search for trinkets, they only have information about what is supported, there is no good information about quality of device and support, high price also not always means better support. SO they just go for lower price and hope not to suffer too much.