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Accountability sinks

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271–280 of 316 posts

Re: Accountability sinks

#271
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…

Norman talks about how systems need a way to veto or override the automatic decisions to be humane.

That book is now almost old enough to have a programming job.

Re: Accountability sinks

#272
This is a small part of business reality. It's not clear how calling out a specific aspect really helps; indeed, it may hurt when business leaders learn how to do this more effectively. It's not at all clear that calling people irresponsible or unaccountable is actually effective at changing the transaction features; it likely makes things worse.

Transaction cost economics since the 1960's has been enumerating aspects like these, and showing they in fact determine the shape of business organizations and markets. Exported costs (implied in accountability sink) are mostly the rule rather than the exception.

What to do with them? A primary TCE finding is that if there were no transaction costs to adjudicating liability, it wouldn't matter from the social cost perspective where the liability lay (with the perpetrator or the victim) because they would adjudicate it down to their mitigation costs. As a result, the main policy goal for assigning liability (if you want to minimize the total cost to society) is actually to minimize and correct for adjudication transaction costs. (hence, no-fault divorce and car insurance)

The same dynamics are at play in the market and within organizations.

As a participant if your goal is your own profit, you can gain by making it harder to adjudicate and reducing the benefits thereof (hence binding arbitration, waivers, and lack of effective feedback). Doing so is becoming much simpler as virtual transaction interfaces and remote (even foreign) support afforded by software replace face-to-face interactions bound by social convention.

And who wouldn't want to? If you're head of customer support or developer relations, would you document your bugs or face the wrath of customers for things which can't change fast enough? You'd want to protect yourself and your staff from all the negativity. Indeed, with fixed salaries, your only way of improving your lot is to make your job easier.

To me the solution is to identify when incorporating the feedback actually benefits the participants. There, too, the scalability of virtualized software interfaces can help, e.g., the phone tree that automates simple stuff most people need and vectors complex questions to real people who aren't so harried, or the departing-customer survey querying whether it was price, quality, or service that drove one away.

You have to make accountability profitable.

Re: Accountability sinks

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The chance are high that a random German speaks english so you’ll probably be good What does high mean in this context? I experienced what I would call the inverse Danish maneuver, the German obviously understand English because they often answered our English questions correctly - In German. In Denmark if a Dane understands what you said in Danish but you have a definite accent they will often answer your question…

They might have been rude, but that's besides the point. Even if they could speak English you shouldn't expect them to be comfortable doing so. That actually seems pretty rude in itself to me.

right, if I'm trying to get information from a guy at a train ticket agent and I don't speak German but he obviously understands what I am saying in English it is me being rude for expecting him to make some sort of attempt to explain to me where I need to get off at in a language we both evidently understand instead of me just learning his language in a couple minutes.

Re: Accountability sinks

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, the analysis with respect to FOSS could also interesting. might make less sense to consider profit/compensation. Might be more useful to think of responsibility flows.. (or sources as well as sinks)

Yah - I think there's value there too. I am a huge fan of FOSS ofc - and also it's good to look at how FOSS allows companies to avoid hiring developers because they can use FOSS products. The first benefit I think of is trying to come up with FOSS approaches that would convince or coerce companies to contribute back to the projects they use at least a little.

I’d seen situations where companies were forced to debug FOSS that caused problems in their proprietary setups.. that counts as persuasion, I presume?

Re: Accountability sinks

#276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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

Sure! But oop mentioned a phenomenon that some companies can hide after algorithms and reject taking responsibility for it. If machines cause damage, people can easily find who's fault, but sometimes the same way does not work on software.

Re: Accountability sinks

#277
post #133

I've long thought that that is one of the main functions of corporations. There's a reason they're called limited liability. The fact that you can conjure up new companies at a whim makes it easy to shuffle responsibility into an obscure corner. This is a strong reason that corporations should not be considered people. People are long-lived entities with accountability and you can't just create or destroy them at wil…

> I've long thought that that is one of the main functions of corporations.

Ambrose Bierce already hit the nail on the head in 1911:

"Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility."

It has long since baffled me this isn't being talked about more – I guess everyone is just so used to it. As far as I'm concerned the entire concept of "fining a company" should be abolished and replaced with the criminal persecution of those who did the illegal thing.

Re: Accountability sinks

#278

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...

I want to note here that this is illegal in the EU. Any company that makes decisions algorithmically (EDIT: actually, by an AI, so maybe not entirely applicable here) must give people the ability to escalate to a human, and be able to give the user information for why that decision was made the way it was made.

Re: Accountability sinks

#280
post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but it’s still fine to have a customer service only answering in the official language. The chance are high that a random German speaks english so you’ll probably be good but if that’s not the case, blaming the company seems unfair to me.

Please look my comment to the parent comment. If you do find a german that speaks understandable english (that you can differentiate “think” and “sink” or “g” and “she” or “zoo” and “sue” then may be the arrogant crap that got my friend. For that they receive years of “Ausbildung”…

Jaa. Vell. Trai zamm Turkish or Arabic zen?

What THE FUCK is it with the expectation that everybody has to understand and speak in-glitch? Employ a local guide. Too expensive? Bad luck. Entitled little .....

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