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Accountability sinks

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Re: Accountability sinks

#111

Post by ginko »

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…

>If things still aren't working, try our online support chat

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

I wish everything had support chat. IMO it's much less hassle than having to call. It's usually trivial to get through the first layer of automated support and get a human on the line.

Re: Accountability sinks

#112

Post by throwaway48476 »

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…

Voting machines are hacked every year at DEFCONs voting village. They're wildly insecure and no one should trust them. Frankly, any claims of manipulation of voting machines are at worst plausible.

Re: Accountability sinks

#113

Post by throwaway2562 »

Douglas Adams was here in 1982 with the invention of the SEP field

‘An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem. That’s what SEP means. Somebody Else’s Problem. The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot.

The narration then explains:

The Somebody Else's Problem field... relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain. If Effrafax had painted the mountain pink and erected a cheap and simple Somebody Else’s Problem field on it, then people would have walked past the mountain, round it, even over it, and simply never have noticed that the thing was there.’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somebody_else's_problem

Re: Accountability sinks

#114

Post by xg15 »

My suspicion I'd that one of the major appeals of automation and especially "app-ification" for management and C-Suite types is specifically its ability to break accountability links.

A lot of corporations now seem to have a structure where the org chart contains the following pattern:

- a "management layer" (or several of them) which consists of product managers, software developers, ops people, etc. The main task of this group is to maintain and implement new features for the "software layer", i.e. the company's in-house IT infrastructure.

Working here feels very much like working in a tech company.

- a "software layer": This part is fully automated and consists of a massive software and hardware infrastructure that runs the day-to-day business of the company. The software layer has "interfaces" in the shape of specialized apps or devices that monitor and control the people in the "worker's layer".

- a "worker's layer": This group is fully human again. It consists of low-paid, frequently changing staff who perform most of the actual physical work that the business requires (and that can't be automated away yet) - think Uber drivers, delivery drivers, Amazon warehouse workers, etc.

They have no contact at all with the management layer and little contact, if any, with human higher-ups. They get almost all their instructions through the apps and other interfaces of the software layer. Companies frequently dispute that those people technically belong to the company at all.

Whether or not those people are classified as employees, the important point (from the management's POV) is that the software layer serves as a sort of "accountability firewall" between the other two layers.

Management only gives the high-level goal of how the software should perform, but the actual day-to-day interaction with the workers is exclusively done by the software itself.

The result is that any complaints from the worker's layer cannot go up past the software - and any exploitative behavior towards the workers can be chalked up as an unfortunate software error.

Re: Accountability sinks

#115

Post by d33k4y »

When stock you've held for years rockets to the moon, and your major banking institution with 100 billion dollar annual revenue experiences "technical difficulties" at the login page. You can't sell your meagre crumbs until the spaceship has completed its orbit and you're left with no doubt about who the system doesn't work for.

Re: Accountability sinks

#116

Post by lifeisstillgood »

bigiain wrote: post #42
alilleybrinker wrote: post #15

Cathy O'Neil's "Weapons of Math Destruction" (2016, Penguin Random House) is a good companion to this concept, covering the "accountability sink" from the other side of those constructing or overseeing systems. Cathy argues that the use of algorithm in some contexts permits a new scale of harmful and unaccountable systems that ought to be reigned in. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/241363/weapons-of-m...

Brings to mind old wisdom: "A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a Management Decision." IBM presentation, 1979

Admittedly the context matters “we are trying to sell to Management, therefore let’s butter them up and tell them they make great decisions and they won’t get automated away” while the next page of the presentation says “we will Automate away 50% of the people Working for you saving globs of money for your next bonus”

IBM in 1979 was not doing anything different to 2024. They were just more relevant

Re: Accountability sinks

#117

Post by tomaskafka »

xg15 wrote: post #114

My suspicion I'd that one of the major appeals of automation and especially "app-ification" for management and C-Suite types is specifically its ability to break accountability links. A lot of corporations now seem to have a structure where the org chart contains the following pattern: - a "management layer" (or several of them) which consists of product managers, software developers, ops people, etc. The main task o…

That’s what @vgr observed some time ago - people split into “above AI” and “below AI”, and the AI slowly moves up in the stack.

Re: Accountability sinks

#118

Post by KronisLV »

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.

I think they’re just right in this case.

Suppose I’m a bad actor that creates an unfair algorithm that overcharges the clients of my company. Eventually it’s discovered. The algorithm could be fixed, the servers decommissioned, whatever, but I’ve already won. If the people who requested the algorithm be made in that way, if the people who implemented it or ran it see no consequences, there’s absolutely nothing preventing me from doing the same thing another time, elsewhere.

Punishment for fraud seems sane, regardless of whether it’s enabled by code or me cooking some books by hand.

Re: Accountability sinks

#119

Post by lifeisstillgood »

k1t wrote: post #80
bigiain wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brings to mind old wisdom: "A computer can never be held accountable, therefore a computer must never make a Management Decision." IBM presentation, 1979

"A computer can never be held accountable, therefore all Management Decisions shall be made by a computer." - Management, 2 seconds later.

Therefore all management decisions are made by the people writing the code

Hence coders are the new managers, managers just funnel the money around, a job which can be automated

Re: Accountability sinks

#120

Post by olex »

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…

>German public transport fascinates with its ease of use and quality

Ease of use maybe, although my parents and grandparents would like to argue differently. They are not as quick to work their smartphone, and the ticket machines are being removed everywhere to be replaced by apps that are much cheaper to run. This works fine for the younger generations, but older and less tech-savvy people are getting left behind.

Quality though, no way. Every single time I tried to give ÖPNV a chance in the last 3-4 years I was either different degrees of late or didn't arrive at all without switching to some alternative method of transport on the way. Doesn't even matter if I tried local routes (Frankfurt and Darmstadt) or longer inter-city connections to Munich or Leipzig, it's all completely broken. People in my company routinely book connections several hours earlier than they need to be places to have a chance of arriving in time, and often are still late. Trains are overbooked, connections are late or often cancelled altogether, seat reservarions don't work more often than they do, WiFi on the trains never works... Many, many things have to change for me to reconsider my default of taking the car everywhere, and I don't think they will in any sort of a relevant timeline.

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