Live data from Hacker News

AI-Driven Drone Surveillance Is Leading to Home Insurance Cancellations

scnr.com

31–40 of 64 posts

Re: AI-Driven Drone Surveillance Is Leading to Home Insurance Cancellations

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An elder care insurance provider definitely sent private investigators after the parents of someone I knew. Their way of getting out of the plan was that he was lifting cardboard boxes: something that his condition should not have permitted. Your car insurance isn’t high value enough but yes they already do this otherwise.

Your personal insurance isn't, but once the tech is perfected to operate on the ones that are, there is zero reason to assume it won't also be deployed to yours. Progressive is one company that insures 27 million drivers. If they deployed this tech to all of them and it earned them a paltry $2 more annually per driver, that's $54 million in extra revenue. And any company that dares not do it once it's widely adopted…

Sure, but that’s fine by me. Shareholders are your fellow policyholders in a mutual insurance company. The high risk people can go start their own mutual insurance.

Re: AI-Driven Drone Surveillance Is Leading to Home Insurance Cancellations

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your personal insurance isn't, but once the tech is perfected to operate on the ones that are, there is zero reason to assume it won't also be deployed to yours. Progressive is one company that insures 27 million drivers. If they deployed this tech to all of them and it earned them a paltry $2 more annually per driver, that's $54 million in extra revenue. And any company that dares not do it once it's widely adopted…

Sure, but that’s fine by me. Shareholders are your fellow policyholders in a mutual insurance company. The high risk people can go start their own mutual insurance.

[flagged]

Re: AI-Driven Drone Surveillance Is Leading to Home Insurance Cancellations

#33
post #28

We had such a notice, for moss and mold (in a hot, dry climate). The images were accurate enough. The insurance company relented after we remediated and sent photos. Image recognition is not really "AI-driven", and the low numbers make that replaceable with humans. It's the cost and legality of drone roof photos that make this possible. The risk represented in the photos was relatively small, but it's a risk easily a…

Unless the insurance company mandates that you use a particular roofing company to address the problem, I can't see how that would constitute illegal tying.

I would expect the insurance company would say something like, "We noticed this problem with your roof. Please correct it or we'll cancel your policy." And then the homeowner is free to choose any roofing company they want to remediate.

Heck, the insurance company could even say, "Here are some reputable roofing companies in your area, but you're still free to select any company you want," and I doubt that would constitute tying.

And anyway, even if you could make the argument that roofing companies in the aggregate will benefit from these sorts of policies, it's not as if keeping one's roof in good condition is forcing consumers to make unreasonable purchases.

Re: AI-Driven Drone Surveillance Is Leading to Home Insurance Cancellations

#34
post #11

Another tech asymmetry that puts consumers at a disadvantage. I wonder if there exists any kind of service for similarly leveraging technology to help consumers find claims opportunities. E.g. run a drone after a hail storm to look for damages that consumers could file claims with. Ideally the carrier would also be doing this, but most aren't going to volunteer money away.

The tech you're thinking of is the tools that now make it easier than ever to compare insurance rates and choose an insurer that best fits your risk profile.

Insurance companies thrive in the margins of customers being overly-conservative, and as the information asymmetry drops, their margins go down.

Re: AI-Driven Drone Surveillance Is Leading to Home Insurance Cancellations

#35
post #18

Expanding on this idea - can health insurance companies fly a drone over my house and see me in my hard eating a cheeseburger and cancel my coverage? Can an auto insurer do the same and cancel my coverage because they see me doing burnouts in my driveway? Seems like a giant privacy violation but I'm no legal expert.

The answer is absolutely "yes". Your car will snitch on you, your house will snitch on you, your phone will snitch on you, your credit card will snitch on you, on an on. This nation is built to support corporations, not personal freedom. This is the result of that architecture.

For now, in most domains, insurance is optional. If it smells worthless, they have a problem.

Re: AI-Driven Drone Surveillance Is Leading to Home Insurance Cancellations

#36
post #11

Another tech asymmetry that puts consumers at a disadvantage. I wonder if there exists any kind of service for similarly leveraging technology to help consumers find claims opportunities. E.g. run a drone after a hail storm to look for damages that consumers could file claims with. Ideally the carrier would also be doing this, but most aren't going to volunteer money away.

I think a defining aspect of our time is that we've passed a threshold where technology will no longer help us more than be used against us.

Re: AI-Driven Drone Surveillance Is Leading to Home Insurance Cancellations

#37
post #5

I’m frankly surprised this is legal. I can’t imagine something like this passing in the EU.

I think the details around this vary a lot from country to country. I work for a Norwegian insurer, and I’m pretty sure that we couldn’t cancel a contract like this short of something like fraud. OTOH, contracts are renewed annually, and I think declining to renew would be an option. But damages due to lack of maintenance are not covered anyways, so I’m not sure if there’s much incentive for this kind of thing in our…

Damages due to lack of maintenance are not covered and you don't see the local application?

Re: AI-Driven Drone Surveillance Is Leading to Home Insurance Cancellations

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but that’s fine by me. Shareholders are your fellow policyholders in a mutual insurance company. The high risk people can go start their own mutual insurance.

[flagged]

Sure but mutual insurance requires a large uncorrelated pool. If those guys don’t like me I’ll have to find those who do (who will be half more risky than me and half less, but I can always take higher risk and insure with the more risky guys) and if I can’t, I’m just too risky and I’ll have to self insure.

Re: AI-Driven Drone Surveillance Is Leading to Home Insurance Cancellations

#39

Expanding on this idea - can health insurance companies fly a drone over my house and see me in my hard eating a cheeseburger and cancel my coverage? Can an auto insurer do the same and cancel my coverage because they see me doing burnouts in my driveway? Seems like a giant privacy violation but I'm no legal expert.

I would assume they've already purchased your "anonymized" credit card transactions, no need to figure out your diet with anything that complicated.

Re: AI-Driven Drone Surveillance Is Leading to Home Insurance Cancellations

#40

Are these like military grade aerial drones or something? The one shown in the picture, and those many use to do prelim roof inspections, fly far too low - seems it would be encroachment of owner's property rights, no?

The article says they’re also using low flying planes and balloons to do the surveys.
Post reply on HN