Rick's b.log - entry 2024/09/14

AI will be harmful

This isn't because it's a massive invasion of privacy. Nor is it because it is industrial scale theft.

It is because we will end up relying on opaque algorithms to make decisions that affect us. Algorithms that not only fail to necessarily arrive at correct conclusions, but may in fact come up with a bucket of crazy... what the AI world cutely refer to as "hallucinations". It's another word for "bullshit".

I shall give you a recent example of mine.

I don't tend to use Google's navigation. That's largely because I'm not as adventurous as my mom so my main car journeys are to work and back and... that's about it.
I did use it recently when going to get my car seen for it's first thousand kilometres. I know the route, but I don't know Bain. But I do know that they have been doing various road works in and around Bain. So the previous time I needed to go, in Caoimhe, I could simply follow the deviation sign and the navigation would determine a new route for me.
There is also something reassuring about a disembodied Norland Nanny saying "At the roundabout, take the third exit". If you don't know what a Norland Nanny is, just imagine Cara Delavigne saying that.

A few days later, after the month had changed, I received a notification from Google Maps about the highlights of my driving in August. It included this gem:

Past notifications are not available, so I'm glad I took a screenshot, because it now denies ever having said such a thing:

Notice it's in miles? That's what happens when a phone set to British English is being used in France and the setting is "Automatic". The map will show the distances in kilometres, but the history for journeys in France will translate it to miles. Rather than, you know, attempting to do something vaguely intelligent like having it switch based upon the country.
So I have just changed the units to force kilometres.

My phone includes a gyro, an accelerometer, and of course the GPS location gizmo. Maps uses all of these to try to determine what mode of transportation is being used. If the phone is bouncing up and down and going slowly, you're probably running. If it's doing that and going faster, maybe on a horse (but I don't think that's a valid Maps option!). There are differences in behaviour between cars and bikes, such as their acceleration profile, how much one leans into the turns, and so on. For some reason it initially misread my car as being a bike. I'm guessing it was either flagged as "we're not sure about this" or something goes through and reviews the decisions, because the motorbike has been removed and rather than doing anything useful like "well, a couple of hours later this device came back in a car", it has simply marked it as "missing travel".
Additionally, it shows me going home, and then ends the journey just prior to my arrival by taking a direct jump (not on any actual road) to the town hall of a nearby village (not even the one I'm in!).

I've just tried telling Maps that my journey actually ended at home. It has accepted that, but isn't willing to let go of the town hall. It now has me ending in the correct place, but it isn't willing to let go on that town hall. So I drive across miles of fields, then turn around and drive back a slightly different way, still going cross country, to arrive home.
Here is a screenshot of the map, heavily edited for privacy, to show how completely dumb this is.

Aside:
 
I would like to say that this goes alongside my supermarket offering me money-off vouchers for feminine hygiene products and Amazon suggesting that I might like a dress for a little girl.
I mean, guys, look at my order history!
 
Actually, this is more understandable when you realise that advertising is the wanton application of bullshit. A company likely paid the supermarket and Amazon to help promote their products. People representing both likely gave all kinds of fascinating facts and charts and talked about "conversion rates" and the like. But the reality, when it gets down to it, is they'll just hand out the coupons and notifications to anybody. They don't care. And hey, if a single childless fifty year old bloke suddenly has a pressing need for tampons, Bing! Conversion!
So these screwy recommendations may not be the result of AI malfunctions but simply a company hoping to have targetted adverts for potentially interested people, and the advert flinger simply not caring enough to bother doing the job correctly. After all, if they get paid for the number of notifications/coupons, it's in their interest to give out as many as possible.
This does, however, degrade the experience for the rest of us. Once upon a time vouchers (at least from the Super U) had some relevance to the purchases that I had made. Not so much now.

I would probably be horrified if I was able to obtain my actual Google profile. Not the one they offer to send you which is simply a recording of your various activities, but the one they don't talk about which is the conclusions drawn in order to classify you for advertising potential. It wouldn't so much be a case of "how the hell did they figure that out" so much as "why the hell do they think that?".
I cannot directly view my advertising profile in Google because I have turned advert personalisation off. But you'd be a dummy to think that they weren't making profiles all the same. The loophole is likely to be that the profile is not person-specific. So rather than "this user" it is "this device" or "this household".

Now, the Google Maps misfire is an amusing anecdote. However one should ask what happens when some sort of artificial algorithm (I'm going to resist referring to it as "intelligence") makes decisions that have a much greater effect. For example, determining suitability for loan applications. Prioritising medical treatments. Or maybe simply assessing your suitability as a driver in realtime to report to your insurer and/or the police. That you may have wanted to turn right to go home but glitched to a different town and back... well... two kilometres in a tenth of a second, that's just over a hundred thousand kilometres per hour. That sort of excess speed is unacceptable. Life denied. Do not pass Go.

This is more egregious when you realise that not only may you not have an opportunity to see what information and decisions were reached, the company in question might consider it a "trade secret" or some such nonsense, and it is possible that if somebody did manage to uncover that your travelling 100,000kph was the issue, they'll bury that deeper than radioactive waste in order to stop it ending up on social media.
Additionally, if you have a problem with a person (defined as a living biological entity of the species Homo sapiens), you can often go to that person (either amically or legally) to obtain an explanation. We are seeing this play out in the Lucy Letby circus show, as after her being convicted for something quite unpleasant, there are no shortage of voices pulling apart the trial and its conclusion. Suffice to say, if she is innocent, it would be one of the most scandalous miscarriages of justice in recent history, potentially enough to cast doubt on validity of the entire judicial process (and there we thought it was just the American Supreme Court trying to flush it's own validity down the U-bend). Either way, when a person makes a decision, there's a person that can be asked why.

When a machine makes a decision, if it's a straight logic based algorithm then one should be able to feed it the same set of inputs and come out with the same responses.
This is not the same for what currently passes as AI, mostly the likes of LLMs, where the exact same input can generate numerous different outputs that are "similar" and may or may not be anything that resembles "correct". I'm sure those who have played with these AI image generators will know what I mean.

What we need is quite simple. Simple things that must be enshrined in law, with penalties for non-compliance that are levied against the company director. Clearly just fining a company is not a deterrent, it's a cost of doing business.

• The legal jurisdiction is the one in which the user/client resides. I don't care what some corrupt court in California thinks, nor am I willing to take myself across an ocean to have a case heard.
• The user/client must be informed of any and all decisions affecting them that are made using algorithms.
• The user/client has the right to demand that this decision be reviewed by a human. The company will be expected to provide a written response within fourteen calendar days; or seven calendar days if the decision has to do with medical, education, employment, or finance.
• The user/client has a full right to access and rectification of all information held on them that is processed by algorithm.
• If a decision goes to arbitration, the company must provide an overview of how the algorithm works that is sufficiently detailed to provide an explanation of how the input provided reached the conclusion arrived at. And, no, saying "trade secrets" or "and magic happens" is inadequate.

These should be given as absolute rights, so a user/client cannot be penalised if, for example, they request a review of every decision made by algorithm.

Mowing

As I'm not sure about Marte's wheel and I lacked the requisite gallons of dead-dino juice, I started with Some Pig, the smaller auto-walking trike mower. This... took about an hour and a half. It looks good, but, just, don't look behind at all the stuff yet to do. ☺

This isn't half cut.

Anna was out while I was doing this. She wasn't quite brave enough to come anywhere near the noisy contraption. She stood aside and mewed. A lot. Then she went and explored stuff for a while.

Afterwards, I walked up the lane to tie up the broken phone line. Shortly after I made my report, somebody came out and pushed the phone line more upright so the fibre line wasn't going across the lane. On what may have been the very last day when it was supposed to be fixed, it was fixed. The damaged pole was replaced by another metal pole, rather than a wooden one. I'm guessing that pole was recycled from elsewhere. And, of course, the fibre was clipped back on to the other pole.

I had collected the broken copper wire and coiled it up. But it was on the ground and had weeds growing over it. In order to make it more obvious, as in "don't get this caught in your flail", I clipped it up onto the pole with zip-strips.

Thankfully the farmer wrecked my defunct ADSL, not my fibre.

As I was coming back, the light was quite lovely. It is whiter as it is later in the year, but still, almost sparkling.

September evening light.

This is, of course, bittersweet. Nice warm evenings belie the chilly mornings, and you just know the nice is on the way out for far too long.

Last Night of the Proms is on now, so I'll upload this and watch. It was something mom liked to watch and, sometimes, join in with. So I shall now enjoy the very model of a modern music ferstival.

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A tree-dwelling mammal, 15th September 2024, 12:48

I'm assuming that "some pig" is a reference to Charlotte's Web?

jgh, 15th September 2024, 13:47

Weird, but for some reason I was sure the main road was to the east of your home. Even that photo of the evening sunlight, my subconcious would have decided I had my back to your driveway. From the map I now assume it's looking down the driveway.

jgh, 15th September 2024, 13:58

And now that I pay attention and look at a map I realise you live in north-west France, for some reason I had it in mind that you lived in northern France, sort of Amiens, Rouen, Reims area.

Rick, 15th September 2024, 13:59

Tree-rodent: Take a look at the "Names of things" page - navbar on the right (in desktop mode) below the calendar. ;)    JGH: Define "main road". Actually, the blurry line is because I departed one way and came back another (it was to exactly follow Google's suggestion to compare the distance given with what my car read). And, yes, if you look down the photo, the driveway ends there with the Western Wilderness, so the driveway/access lane *is* behind me. Sort of. It's bendy, like all the roads around here.  You can see how it fits together: https://youtu.be/MgkKXs_uF78

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