[HN Gopher] Dutch gov't wants to ban officials from using AI sof...
___________________________________________________________________
Dutch gov't wants to ban officials from using AI software
Author : jruohonen
Score : 68 points
Date : 2023-11-16 14:21 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nltimes.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (nltimes.nl)
| WJW wrote:
| > The risks in terms of privacy and copyright infringements are
| currently too high, State Secretary Alexandra van Huffelen
| (Digital Affairs) said in a draft proposal...
|
| Seems reasonable to me.
|
| > Van Huffelen added that she doesn't want to write off
| generative AI use within the government entirely. She plans
| various experiments to see how government services can use the
| technology safely. The pilots should be ready by mid-2024, after
| which the government can draw up guidelines for the responsible
| use of AI. There will also be a training program for civil
| servants.
|
| This is pretty much how I'd like the issue to be handled by
| governments. The technology is clearly potentially useful, but
| there is a lot we do not understand about it yet. Experimenting
| with it until we have a better understanding is the way to go,
| and starting mid-2024 is early enough. The article headline is
| slightly overdone though. To me it suggests a permanent ban,
| while this is nothing of the sort.
|
| I'm Dutch though, so maybe I'm biased.
| deafpolygon wrote:
| It's reasonable - I think they just want to be able to get
| policy in place before we have politicians typing in state
| secrets like "How can I get Rutte to _____?" I wouldn't like it
| (also Dutch, hallo!).
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| Wasn't there a major Dutch scandal involving families
| wrongfully being denied welfare on the basis of "the
| algorithm said so"?
| deafpolygon wrote:
| Indeed! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benef
| its_scand...
| interactivecode wrote:
| Indeed, though that wasn't AI, that was direct
| discrimination and racism hidden behind a thin layer of
| policy.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_scan
| d...
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, there definitely was and it wasn't so much driven by
| the tech itself as it was by the need to be seen to be
| doing something against _perceived_ fraud by minorities
| which led to mass profiling and huge fall-out (and too
| little, in my opinion). It was effectively racism under a
| thin veneer of plausible deniability provided by
| technology.
|
| Tech by itself can be bad enough, tech wielded to achieve
| nebulous goals without any consideration for the human side
| of the effects is outright dangerous.
| em500 wrote:
| > by the need to be seen to be doing something against
| _perceived_ fraud by minorities which led to mass
| profiling and huge fall-out
|
| It was not only _perceived_ fraud by minorities:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_sc
| and...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_sc
| and...
|
| Most practitioners can tell you that naive anti-crime
| initiatives often end up targeting minorities. In many
| Western countries, minorities are significantly over-
| represented in crime and jail statistics (compared to the
| general population). Is that ipso facto racism or racial
| profiling?
| jacquesm wrote:
| This is exactly the kind of thinking that caused this
| whole thing to spiral out of control.
|
| The little bit of fraud that was uncovered did not
| justify declaring a very large fraction of the Dutch
| population as fraudulent. I'm kind of surprised that your
| takeaway is exactly of the kind that has been proven to
| be utterly wrong and counterproductive during this whole
| affair. Yes, what you are advocating for is racism and
| racial profiling.
| WJW wrote:
| It's a little bit more complicated than that, it was "the
| rules said so" and then they just used humans to check if
| people used the rules. The government at the time was very
| hard on fraud after a couple of high-profile fraud cases by
| immigrants. Mostly Bulgarians falsely claiming welfare
|
| Anyway, several ministers and other high officials
| pressured the welfare department to be hard on fraud, which
| caused the imposition of harsh fines for minor filing
| errors. The department also got into a bit of a witch hunt
| were anyone being investigated for fraud was almost always
| presumed to be guilty. This, combined with the fact that
| most of the welfare recipients were not very educated,
| didn't speak Dutch all that well and/or were under a lot of
| stress due to being generally economically disadvantaged,
| led to some big fines levied against people who didn't
| objectively do all that much wrong. Several of them lost
| their homes or got deep into debt due to the fines and
| legal costs.
|
| Simply claiming it was "the algorithm said so" skips over
| all the history about why the rules were written the way
| they were, and the human errors made along the way.
| interactivecode wrote:
| Indeed to me that's not a ban, but a restriction in the use of
| possibly risky software until they had the time to draw up
| guidelines. Honestly everyone working in a company or large
| organisation aught to have a similar stance. Until we know for
| sure, don't use it.
| Aeolun wrote:
| It's not that hard to just not stick your sensitive data in.
| If find it absurd that people would even consider it.
|
| I had a whole presentation today on how important it was to
| 'scrub' your data before sticking it in a generative model,
| and I was just like 'hell no', I'm not doing that because
| data that's supposed to be scrubbed shouldn't go anywhere
| near the model.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| I know the Dutch government, did lot of dev work for them,
| these pilots mean a lot of taxpayer money.
|
| Half of the pilots won't be completed and the other half won't
| be used.
|
| There is no way that in 6-7 months experimenting will lead to
| different insights then we have now. It does mean a lot of
| expensive consultants and reports.
|
| The only useful thing would be an on-premise solutions, which
| I'm sure lots of startups are working on; not something these
| pilots will be able to manage in 6-7 months unless with lots of
| luck (finding the right people) & cash.
| lozenge wrote:
| Yes, this seems like somebody seeing AI as an area they can
| "take over" including prestige and a headcount.
|
| In this case, every department of the government already has
| a legal team, a privacy and data use officer, etc,
| responsible for the use of any product. Why does this need to
| be centralised?
|
| In my org, somebody got hold of 50 license seats for a
| popular code generating AI, and required users to fill in
| lengthy forms and provide regular feedback about their "use
| cases" and "experience". Somehow, this "pilot" never ends,
| because then their makework would end.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| This becomes an issue if each department is not consistent
| with each other.
|
| Recently at an American university a department was banned
| for new tenure positions for two years after it was found
| that their hiring process differed from the university's as
| a whole, in a way that could get the university as a whole
| into legal trouble.
| https://www.washington.edu/news/2023/10/31/university-
| takes-...
|
| Getting ahead of it with a universal policy to set a
| minimum bar doesn't sound like the worst idea.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| As another Dutch person I'm actually disappointed that this is
| purely limited to generated images or text, given that the
| Childcare Benefits Scandal[0] also involved machine learning
| algorithms that encoded institutional biases against parts of
| our society (among many other structural issues, but let's
| focus on the one relevant to this topic).
|
| But then again, I no longer live in the Netherlands so maybe I
| missed an earlier memo that the government decided to no longer
| do that kind of thing. I highly doubt it though.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_childcare_benefits_scand...
| creesch wrote:
| > also involved machine learning algorithms
|
| I could be wrong, but afaik it involved "just" algorithms not
| machine learning. Which is a meaningful distinction, as
| traditional algorithms can actually be audited much easier in
| regards to how they make calls.
|
| Which is also (although with limited success) what they have
| been focussing on with things like the algorithm register
| (https://www.digitaleoverheid.nl/overzicht-van-alle-
| onderwerp...)
| SkyBelow wrote:
| The real issue seems to be the data governance and people
| forgetting good data governance when they interact with AI.
| Does it matter if you are asking Chat GPT to organize this list
| of PII or asking a random Reddit user to organize it, both are
| leaking data to an unauthorized third party that can leak it
| elsewhere. If the model is entirely self hosted and is treated
| similar to a database so that any PII it is given means the
| model is treated as always having that PII in it, even if the
| average user can't find a way to extract it, then the privacy
| concerns are no different than using any other self hosting
| application that can store data. You will need to treat it like
| a data source where all users have either full admin access or
| no access, unlike a database where you can delegate well
| controlled partial access.
|
| On the copyright side, that seems more uniquely tied to current
| AI technology so the accusation of AI being a buzzword wouldn't
| apply.
| contravariant wrote:
| This being Dutch politicians dealing with technology it
| wouldn't surprise me if they completely miss the point. In fact
| by basically only mentioning ChatGPT they may have already.
|
| You can do quite a lot of harm with very simple models, all you
| need is unclear rules, little oversight and no avenues for
| escalation. Which in fact did go wrong, terribly, plunging tens
| of thousands of households into bankruptcy. You don't need
| something capable of modelling human language to make things
| worse. At most a more powerful model can simply do more, but
| the risks are roughly the same.
|
| And if neural networks writing obtuse language with little
| empathy following a complex set of rules are causing problems
| then I've got some bad news about Dutch officials.
| narinxas wrote:
| this is an instance of the mistake of putting safety first,
| _before_ health.
|
| if safety is more important than health, that means that it is
| ok to shoot first and ask questions later
| mistrial9 wrote:
| this is a quick anecdote from California.. a very recent paper by
| Google on the "AI Opportunity Agenda" starts out with very
| optimistic claims about AI for administering cities, the example
| is "timing stoplights to increase traffic efficiency and reduce
| carbon emissions" .. yet, what is actually implemented now in the
| SF Bay Area is .. automatic license plate readers at the bridges
| 24x7, and new Gov Newsom approved automatic speeding ticket
| generators on major roads in the largest cities. Traffic cameras
| at intersections have been implemented more and more in ten
| years.
|
| How can an intelligent citizen hear "optimized traffic lights" in
| the industry white paper, and see "automatic speeding tickets" in
| reality ? What number of cars on the road are adhering to the
| posted limit at all times? .. let's be blunt, it is a money
| machine, for local govt.
|
| Other examples of distributing public benefits, or handling
| public appeals, could easily see this level of duplicity. One
| thing is said in PR, another thing entirely is prevalent in
| practice with citizens.
|
| I claim this example is relevent to the Dutch concerns because a)
| Netherlands is similarly diverse, crowded and high-tech, and b)
| national level analysis has detected potential for abuse at the
| local govt level on a wide scale.
| swatcoder wrote:
| It's funny how language makes all the difference in telling
| stories like yours:
|
| A vendor published a marketing flyer suggesting ways their new
| expensive technology could improve services typical of a
| potential customer.
|
| The customer considered the marketing pitch in the flyer and
| found the ROI unconvincing in most cases, especially given that
| the technology remains largely unproven and would leave them at
| high risk of failure or cost surprises as an early adopter.
|
| Nonetheless, they did see at least one place where the
| implementation was more mature and might pay for itself (and
| perhaps even contributing revenue) while fulfilling an ongoing
| service mandate.
|
| -- --
|
| Sounds like a dutiful government to me! Rather than being
| sucked into a flashy sales pitch by a vendor pitching an
| unproven and expensive product, they've stood firm and decided
| to mostly wait for others to absorb the early adopter risks,
| carefully stewarding public money.
|
| That governments can sometimes do very stupid and irresponsible
| things doesn't mean that they're doing so every time.
| reidjs wrote:
| I hate receiving speeding tickets as much as the next guy, but
| I am pro automated speeding tickets. I must be getting old.
|
| - May encourage slower (safer) driving habits, fewer accidents
|
| - Automates some police duties, frees law enforcement to deal
| with actual crimes
|
| - City generates more money without raising taxes
|
| These are all hypothetical, and obviously corruption and apathy
| paves over most of it, but in practice, automated speeding
| tickets are a great use of "AI"
| polski-g wrote:
| There seems to be a strange medium in which people think that
| speeding limits should exist but we shouldn't try too hard to
| enforce them. Like they just want a little bit of criminality,
| but not too much. If you are opposed to speeding limit
| enforcement, then just get rid of them. We do not need
| "sometimes laws".
| mistrial9 wrote:
| there is an expression in English that says: you put the cart
| before the horse. I think this applies here.
|
| It is not "we wish things to be this way, so they are this
| way" .. the real world is not like that. For several thousand
| years, new technology like carts or horse-stirrups, have
| changed a balance of power between groups of humans who use
| those, and groups that do not; in this example, the cart for
| the agrarian, the stirrup for the hunting pack.
|
| When new technology is implemented, the behavior of all
| humans at all times does not change instantly, nor does it
| change "because we want this".. It changes in fact, in
| practice, and over weeks or decades.
|
| Right now, there is some agreement among humans driving cars.
| They drive a certain style, on roads, with law enforcement
| and prices. Costs are applied for goods like tires or gas,
| and also penalties like speeding tickets due to a speed limit
| that is posted in a way that is considered fair and public...
| in most places.
|
| When I learned to drive, the legend of the "hidden speed
| limit sign" became dinner table talk. The ability of a small
| town to generate revenue for their police force, by waiting
| for people who are not fairly informed, or really just the
| police lying.. is common knowledge, because it is real.
|
| Your comment makes it appear as if whole populations "want
| criminality" and this appears to be a conveniently simple,
| blaming the driver, point of view. It sounds ok in two
| sentences, but does not hold up to deeper inspection of
| policy over time in real places. You might say "oh we are not
| in some small town" well guess what.. large cities have
| corruption, believe it. Whole countries have corruption, in
| fact.
|
| My post stands unedited.
| huijzer wrote:
| This makes a lot of sense in my opinion. OpenAI has only
| satisfied the absolute minimum requirements for their data
| controls. If you disable "Chat History & Training" (also known as
| "Chat History" in the app), then almost all functionality is
| blocked. Specifically, Voice interactions (speech to text works,
| but not the full touchfree voice mode), and GPTs.
|
| I do have to compliment OpenAI on the fact that they did improve
| the situation now with the new interface. Browsing and image
| generation does work when "Chat History & Training" is disabled
| whereas it used to not work a few weeks ago. Apart from the
| missing GPTs, ChatGPT is appears quite usable with "Chat History
| & Training" disabled.
| informatimago wrote:
| It is a political and societal choice.
|
| I could understand that a people decides that it should be
| governed with pure human processes, and therefore that its
| government and civil servant has to use only human brain power
| (and compassion) to govern and administrate.
|
| I would be afraid to miss some good or even just rational
| decision making, but I think we can all agree that a 100% AI
| government or administration would be a bad idea, so how to
| ensure that there's always a reasonable and informed human to
| decide, even with the help of AI and computer models?
|
| The wiseness of this decision should probably spread largely, for
| example, when considering the decision making that has been done
| and keep being done around things like climate change MODELS, and
| COVID spreading MODELS.
| gumballindie wrote:
| This needs to happen at an EU level. I am pleasantly surprised
| that companies and now governments are taking steps to protect in
| the right direction - even if at bare minimum - our data. Next we
| need to protect our property.
| oktoberpaard wrote:
| They better hurry up with this then:
| https://www.surf.nl/en/news/the-netherlands-starts-realisati....
| pimpampum wrote:
| This is the right decision for now. gov officials have access to
| lots of data that should not en up in OpenAIs servers. Long-term
| they should have their own inhouse or some ministry of digital
| infrastructure.
| zimmen wrote:
| To be fair, the Dutch government basically banned the use of any
| kind of intelligence a long time ago.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-11-16 23:01 UTC)