[HN Gopher] The right not to be subjected to AI profiling based ...
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The right not to be subjected to AI profiling based on publicly
available data
Author : tokai
Score : 214 points
Date : 2024-06-06 14:03 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (link.springer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (link.springer.com)
| Spivak wrote:
| I don't love this. Informed consent is a lie and a loophole you
| can drive a container ship through. Anything less than right to
| refuse where services aren't allowed to deny you service until
| you accept is worthless. Also AI isn't special, I don't want to
| be profiled by humans or non-AI based systems based on my public
| data either. And for that matter public data isn't special either
| -- I don't want to be profiled via my private data sold though
| backroom deals between companies _more_ than I care about my
| public data. At least I can can curate the latter.
|
| The problem is that if you don't narrowly target AI you bump into
| "well this is what adtech does" and getting legislation that
| hurts the profits of one of the US's golden calfs is a
| nonstarter.
| michaelt wrote:
| I think there are qualitative differences that arise from
| incremental, quantitative changes in privacy.
|
| Sure, in the 1970s the cops could follow you around any time you
| were out in public. But they needed 6+ cops to provide round-the-
| clock surveillance, with an annual cost in the high six figures.
|
| So the average citizen's privacy was protected not by law or
| high-minded ideals about privacy, but by simple numbers. There
| weren't enough cops to follow even 0.1% of the population.
|
| But in the modern age of smartphones and license plate
| recognition and credit reference agencies? I think there's a
| strong argument to be made that we need new laws and new rights
| to reflect the new reality, where tracking people around the
| clock is several orders of magnitude cheaper.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| as usual, a small group of effective people with strong
| leadership have already acted on this -- in the opposite
| direction you are suggesting.. Palantir and others have built,
| monetized and promoted exactly the opposite, and thousands of
| schlubs in the ad business went along with it.. the USA has
| changed
| infogulch wrote:
| 100%. I like this way of describing the effect:
|
| A large enough change in scale manifests as a change in kind.
|
| As a topical example, SpaceX is trying to reduce launch costs
| by 20x with Starship, which just had its 4th test flight this
| morning. Some don't see the point: there's not nearly enough
| demand to launch thousands of tons into orbit per year. But 20x
| is _a lot_ cheaper, so they 're banking on induced demand
| expanding the _kinds_ of projects that send things to space.
| ben_w wrote:
| They're also planning to go to Mars, and Starship is the
| smallest vehicle that could enable that on the scale desired.
|
| It's certainly a gamble that there will be a million people
| willing to spend $200k to do this, which... well, I think
| it's not entirely impossible, as the idea was something I
| liked until Musk's own personality put me off the idea of
| being stuck on a planet with only his sycophants for company.
|
| Which is a bit of a shame, but still, I'd give it 50-50 odds
| of being a product-market fit just for that.
| rurp wrote:
| We are so incredibly far from being able to build a
| sustainable colony on Mars, especially at a realistic cost,
| that it makes no sense as a product goal. It _is_ a fun
| thought experiment and an inspiring goal for many though,
| which I think is the real motivation for focusing on it so
| much.
|
| Elon is undoubtedly great at getting folks to commit money
| and talent to his companies, and talking about plausible-
| ish things like becoming a multiplanetary species is one
| way he accomplishes that.
| ben_w wrote:
| > We are so incredibly far from being able to build a
| sustainable colony on Mars, especially at a realistic
| cost, that it makes no sense as a product goal.
|
| "Dying on Mars, just not on impact" is Musk's final
| bucket list item. Almost everything else he does is to
| enable that vision, either directly by creating the tech,
| or indirectly because he knows this is expensive.
|
| He may well fail, nobody's ever done this and we don't
| know how many surprises there will be.
|
| But the ship working well enough for $200k tickets is
| plausible.
|
| (The idea that banks will give people loans for that, not
| so much: without multi-planetary trade, nothing that
| happens on Mars can repay a debt on Earth, and I don't
| see Mars as having any special economic benefits to make
| such trade worthwhile).
| jazzyjackson wrote:
| "quantity has a quality of its own"
| habosa wrote:
| Funny, because Elon has said in the past he thinks induced
| demand is an "irrational theory":
| https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1211076829395738626
| infogulch wrote:
| That is funny!
| Mathnerd314 wrote:
| Wikipedia splits induced demand into "latent demand" and
| "generated demand". I think Elon has no trouble with the
| idea of latent demand and that by lowering the costs of
| space travel more will do it. The issue is generated
| demand, it is a bit irrational to think that a person with
| no desire for space travel in the first place will say "oh
| look, space travel is cheap, let's make a satellite". The
| general story is startups find market fit or they die. You
| have to find the customers, it is not like you make a
| product and everyone changes their desires to conform.
| diffxx wrote:
| It's not totally irrational. There is a reason for the
| phrase monkey see, monkey do.
| fsckboy wrote:
| Elon is correct.
|
| So-called "induced demand" is just a dumbing down of the
| more fundamental notion of supply and demand, for people
| who aren't comfortable thinking about math, calculus,
| dynamic equilibria, etc. If you read the wikipedia article
| on it, you'll see they constantly describe it in terms of
| supply and demand. The term was originally "defined" in
| 1999 in a paper that was not written by economists. It's
| not an economics term.
|
| in terms of transportation planning, a better way to think
| about it is, "misery distributes itself throughout the
| system".
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| The Stasi in Cold War East Germany reportedly had 1 informant
| for every 6.5 people, or 15% of the population informing on
| their neighbors. That's the kind of scale that is needed for
| total analogue surveillance.
| red_admiral wrote:
| And then the CCP looked at what the CCCP did, thought "that's
| cute" and optimised it until they'd invented the social
| credit score. It turns out digital is the way to go for
| scale.
| WaffleIronMaker wrote:
| I get where you're coming from, but I think it's important
| to keep in mind that there is no centralized score for
| Chinese citizens, and that such claims are often
| sensationalized. [1] However, I'd agree that China is a
| good example of high degrees of surveillance.
|
| [1] https://merics.org/en/comment/chinas-social-credit-
| score-unt...
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I love how every American is so ready to jump on the China
| hate train for their social credit score thing when it's
| literally the same goddamned thing as a credit score in
| America, with like, some added shit about public shaming.
| As though we don't 110% shame people in this country for
| having shitty credit, even if it isn't explicitly part of
| the thing.
|
| Like I've lost count of the number of times people will
| comment on videos of bad drivers or whatever "what do you
| expect from someone driving a [brand] car financed at 28%
| with no money down." Like yeah maybe our credit score
| system here doesn't officially have a shaming mechanism,
| but that's the only real difference and it isn't like we
| don't bolt it onto the side ourselves just because we
| fucking hate poor people.
|
| To be clear, not meaning to defend the social credit score,
| both of these systems suck and should be abolished. I just
| think it's hilarious how many people are like HURR HURR
| SOCIAL CREDIT SCORE when it was _designed after America 's
| credit score system._ We prototyped it.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I love how every American is so ready to jump on the
| China hate train for their social credit score thing when
| it's literally the same goddamned thing as a credit score
| in America, with like, some added shit about public
| shaming
|
| The "added shit about public shaming" is not a trivial
| issue, and also Americans aren't particularly fond of
| actual credit scores or the broader credit reporting
| system they are part of, either.
|
| Like, there is nothing hypocritical about viewing extra
| negatively another society that has taken a disliked
| element of your own and made it worse.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > The "added shit about public shaming" is not a trivial
| issue
|
| I think it could be considered trivial given how much of
| your life can be made an utter hell by a bad credit
| score. Things like not being able to finance a house when
| you already spend more per month on rent than a mortgage,
| being forced into predatory financial products because
| you lack the ability to get regular ones, refusal for
| companies to hire you for work based on your credit
| score, your credit history just being _wrong_ and being
| saddled with the task of probably hundreds of hours of
| work and god knows how much money to fix it because none
| of the providers give a shit about helping you, the risks
| with identity theft, on and on and on.
|
| As someone who has had to unfuck my credit due to idiocy
| in financial institutions that was completely, 100% not
| my fault and yet fell solely on my shoulders to handle, I
| assure you it is a special circle of bureaucratic hell
| that would easily stand toe-to-toe with the worst any
| governments have to offer.
|
| Is it GOOD that it has mechanisms for that? No. But
| again, I emphasize: we _add that ourselves to it all the
| same._ And yes it 's definitely worse when it's inscribed
| in the law's text, but I wouldn't say it's _that
| different_ either.
|
| > Like, there is nothing hypocritical about viewing extra
| negatively another society that has taken a disliked
| element of your own and made it worse.
|
| Oh sure, 100%, but that presupposes that the commenter in
| question thinks credit reports are bad. And yeah, a fair
| number of Americans hate them, but like with a lot of
| things Americans hate, they'll also say shit like "well
| that's just how it is." But apparently such status-quo
| allyship doesn't cross into China.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I think it could be considered trivial given how much
| of your life can be made an utter hell by a bad credit
| score
|
| The scope of damage increases, rather than decreases, the
| significance of expanding the set of inputs that can
| contribute to the damage.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| So why does almost every US landlord use credit scores to
| screen renters?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > So why does almost every US landlord use credit scores
| to screen renters?
|
| Landlords are part of one of the bourgeois (petit ot
| haut) classes, elite minorities. Their interests are not
| those of the median American, and are in many ways
| opposed to them.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Hardly. It's more that in a large business, you know that
| a percentage of people will trash the apartment,
| requiring expensive repairs, so as a company you reduce
| risk.
|
| And as a small landlord, renting a second house, hoping
| to pay for your retirement in old age, or maybe a good
| school for your kids, you're even more cautious.
|
| The alternative is a year's rent in deposit, because
| first and last barely covers a damaged carpet, let alone
| a trashed place.
|
| And that's just the damage side of things.
|
| One of the landlords I spoke to, said that while he
| understood why renter protections had become so strong,
| it took forever to kick out a tenant not paying rent. So
| naturally, he was scared of renting to anyone with money
| troubles before.
|
| You may disagree with these reasons, but people aren't
| reducing the market they can rent to for no reason.
|
| Times were easier when most people lived in smaller
| towns. You knew who you rented to, and didn't need a
| credit bureau to vouch.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Every time this subject comes up all we hear about is how
| risky it is for the landlord. Like... no shit? It's an
| investment. Risk is part of investments. Sometimes
| investments don't pay out, and sometimes you lose money.
|
| If you want to make money in a risk-averse manner, might
| I suggest a job instead of an investment property? You
| know, like the people who's money you want to take are
| required to prove to you they have, so you can take a
| nice chunk of it so they can not freeze to death? One of
| those. They're all over the place, according to the
| landlords.
|
| > One of the landlords I spoke to, said that while he
| understood why renter protections had become so strong,
| it took forever to kick out a tenant not paying rent.
|
| Did he happen to mention _why_ the tenant stopped paying?
| Because that 's probably pretty relevant to why renter
| protections were stopping him from throwing him out onto
| the street. Like, I'm sorry it's bit of a bureaucratic
| fuckabout to KICK SOMEONE OUT OF THEIR HOME but you know,
| the landlord in this scenario has the economic backing
| to, in some way, own an extra residence that they don't
| need, and the tenant they're trying to evict (probably)
| doesn't. So on the whole I'm okay with renter protections
| making that hard. One of these people is acutely more
| vulnerable to houselessness, and it isn't the dude with
| 2+ houses.
|
| Again, if this is a problem, maybe said landlord should
| get a job.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Your entire argument is basically "how dare someone have
| something I don't" and "people shouldn't seek to mitigate
| risk".
|
| This won't get far with me, and seems to me to be a
| pointless response.
|
| Are you seriously of the thought that owning more than
| one home is wrong? And renting it to someone that cannot
| afford to buy a home is wrong? If so, why?
|
| Do you get mad if that person just leaves the money in
| the bank, and the second home isn't built?
|
| Are you mad people may make more than you? Do you believe
| everyone should just be given all the same stuff?
|
| This is essentiall your argument.
|
| How does that function, societally? Magic?
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > Your entire argument is basically "how dare someone
| have something I don't" and "people shouldn't seek to
| mitigate risk".
|
| Wrong. My entire argument is that one of these people is
| already advantaged heavily in society and doesn't need
| further help being more advantaged, and that all
| business, including the "business" of renting property,
| has risk. Of course you're allowed to minimize risk. I
| suggest you get out of the business entirely, can't get
| more risk-free than that.
|
| > This won't get far with me
|
| I cannot express to you in words how little your opinion
| means to me.
|
| > and seems to me to be a pointless response.
|
| On that point however, we agree.
|
| > Are you seriously of the thought that owning more than
| one home is wrong? And renting it to someone that cannot
| afford to buy a home is wrong? If so, why?
|
| Because you are artificially restricting the supply of an
| essential good for life or business and charging for
| access to it. Not _ownership,_ merely _access._ Numerous,
| well-thought of economists decry the practices of rent
| seeking for this exact reason: you are not adding value,
| you are using your financial position to restrict access
| to things others need and then charging them for that
| access.
|
| In fact the dictionary defines rent-seeking behavior as
| such: "Rent-seeking is a concept in economics that states
| that an individual or an entity seeks to increase their
| own wealth without creating any benefits or wealth to the
| society. Rent-seeking activities aim to obtain financial
| gains and benefits through the manipulation of the
| distribution of economic resources."
|
| > This is essentiall your argument.
|
| No it isn't, your straw-man is pathetic.
| bbarnett wrote:
| You're quite abusive, but beyond that, you're not really
| responding in kind.
|
| The post you originally responded to, simply explained
| the risks involved in renting, and why a credit check is
| often used to reduce that risk.
|
| As a response you went on a rant about, essentially,
| "screw landlords" inline with "because they have what I
| don't". This is effectively what you said, and you've
| doubled down here.
|
| No matter what, you're blaming the wrong people. If you
| have an issue with how certain aspects of our free
| economy works, I'll listen. But blaming landlords is akin
| to blaming car dealerships because a car is expensive.
| It's finger pointing without cause.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| The landlord wants to be paid every month. A credit
| score's entire reason for existence is to attempt to
| quantify that. It would be strange if a landlord didn't
| look at that.
| inanutshellus wrote:
| My understanding of the Chinese credit score system is
| that, unlike the US credit model, it includes your
| personal social media posts.
|
| Thus the negative press in the US was specifically about
| that, with fear that if you ever, say, criticize the
| wrong person or expressed an unpopular opinion you'd end
| up paying a premium on your loan or even be unable to get
| a mortgage.
|
| Since there's a fairly high opacity to the US credit
| scores I wouldn't be surprised to find these things added
| to the US credit score too as an opt-in mechanism to save
| money similar to how we can now choose to get a key fob
| to prove to our insurance companies that we drive within
| the speed limit.
| kaibee wrote:
| If being anti-government in the US was something you
| could get arrested for and therefore stop paying your
| debts because of, I think it'd get added to credit scores
| pretty quickly.
| sickofparadox wrote:
| A person with no credit or a low credit score is still
| allowed to buy train tickets and leave their hometown. A
| person with high credit score is not punished in any way
| for interacting with a person with a low credit score.
| Credit scores in the United States do not incentivize
| families cutting off contact with members who do not
| support the ruling party. To say that "they are
| essentially the same" is to run cover for the most
| objectionable parts because you are mad that creditors
| want a way to determine if someone is going to cut and
| run with their money.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| The government is allowed to 'unbank' you, or to at least
| push banks to 'voluntarily' 'unbank' you. Having your
| bank accounts closed and credit cards all canceled
| summarily is going to hurt your credit score, which in
| turn is going to make renting a place to live very
| difficult.
| sickofparadox wrote:
| Could you provide an example of the government pushing
| for someone to be unbanked? Preferably someone not guilty
| of some kind of finance crime (or accused and on the
| run).
| darby_nine wrote:
| TBH this doesn't seem much different than what western
| credit warehousers (e.g. transunion/equifax/experian) do.
| holoduke wrote:
| If the west had a creditscore, mine would be very very low.
| I am banned on almost every social medium. C, FB, insta,
| tiktok, reddit, google and more. Its pretty tough sometimes
| to survive on the internet without having access to all.
| (Although most still have read access)
| parpfish wrote:
| i started struggling with this years ago with the scale up of
| face recognition software.
|
| nobody thought there was a problem when you stuck up a wanted
| posted and asked a community 'do you know who this is'? but if
| you stick that poster into a computer and ask, all of a sudden
| people complain that it's a privacy issue.
|
| i _really_ struggle to see how they 're different and the only
| thing i've been able to some up with is that people feel the
| only counterweight to abuses and biases of policing is to build
| in random inefficiencies
| SoftTalker wrote:
| A wanted poster might have some people watching faces more
| closely, but they aren't compiling a history of every face
| they saw and when and where they saw it, and sending that in
| to law enforcement where it can be combined with other
| histories and used to generate suspect lists based on
| coincidences.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Right, that's just saying "we prefer built-in random
| inefficiencies" with extra steps. The _heart_ of
| investigation is pulling coincidences into an actionable
| pattern (which is different from trial and conviction,
| which relies on far more than coincidences).
|
| Given how much crime currently goes uninvestigated because
| the backlog is so high, is automating some of the
| coincidence-sniffing a bad thing?
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think it really depends on the reason why you were going
| around putting up wanted posters and asking people if they'd
| seen somebody. If it was a dangerous criminal, sure. An ex?
| Creepy. In general, I'd have some probing questions before
| being forthcoming, I like to think. Picture of my friend?
| Sure Mr. Private investigator, tell me what you want and give
| me your number, and I'll let him know somebody wants to talk
| to him...
|
| If there was, like, a club devoted to organizing the sort of
| informal observations of who was where and trying to track
| everybody the old fashioned way, I'd think everyone involved
| was a real creep there, too. Although, of course, this would
| be a bit impractical.
|
| And the paparazzi weren't some beloved people, and they
| mostly targeted public figures!
|
| There's something to be said for the inefficiency I guess.
| But, I think it is also to a large extent a proxy for the
| idea that normal people only went on the hunt for somebody
| for a good reason.
| layer8 wrote:
| Differences:
|
| 1. Wanted posters were only hung up based on human witness
| reports and for a very limited number of suspects. With face
| recognition, you can hunt automatically for hundreds who
| happened to be around a specific place at the wrong time.
|
| 2. Reach, and therefore likelihood of false-positive face
| matches.
|
| 3. Investigators wouldn't blindly believe a random community
| member reporting a match, they would check if the reported
| suspect really matches the description and the circumstances.
| With face recognition and AI, people tend to just assume that
| the computer is correct.
| l33t7332273 wrote:
| I think it's notable that your first point is directly in
| line with GP's idea about built inefficiencies.
| brandall10 wrote:
| FWIW, China's social credit system first arose from trying to
| replicate what we had in the US with our credit agencies.
|
| With things like Project2025 being embraced, it's horrifying
| what the future may hold if checks and balances aren't in
| place.
| hnthrowaway0328 wrote:
| It's already too late, and with the shadow of WW3 soon it
| will be just worse.
| delusional wrote:
| Looking past the cost, it also used to be a huge hassle. If I
| wanted to know what you were doing, I'd have to hire 6 guys
| sure, but I'd also need to manage them. Plan out their shifts,
| handle payroll, and their internal disputes. The practical
| reality of surveillance meant it HAD to be a conspiracy. The
| risk of someone talking was huge.
|
| Now it's easily hidden. Somebody can monitor you just by
| accessing information systems without the people collecting the
| data even knowing. You can now do the surveillance alone, no
| pesky accomplices needed.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I also think the laws need to change with changing technology.
|
| Take something like speeding. We have speed limits and fines
| set based on the idea that cops won't catch most speeders and
| that cops can give leeway based on the situation (driving 10
| mph over the speed limit on an empty straight highway is
| different than driving 10 mph over the speed limit weaving in
| heavy traffic).
|
| We set a relatively low max speed and a high penalty, because
| you are only going to be pulled over a fraction of the time.
|
| Then we roll out speed cameras which can catch people EVERY
| time they speed. It doesn't make sense to have the limits as
| low and the fines as high when every single person that goes
| over the limit can be fined. We have to tune the laws for
| perfect enforcement.
|
| This is true for a lot of laws... most are designed based on
| the enforcement capabilities of the time. We need to adjust for
| technology.
| lancesells wrote:
| > We set a relatively low max speed and a high penalty
|
| I'm in the US and speeding is a leading cause of death.
| Driving deaths are increasing so I don't know if having less
| or no cameras is a good thing.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| It most certainly is not. Plus, I'd imagine this is more
| for accidents "in town" rather than on straight interstate
| highways where these cameras are normally set up. Take out
| alcohol and poor conditions and it's basically a non-issue.
|
| https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/motor-vehicle-
| safe...
| jgeada wrote:
| Not sure if speeding is the leading cause of death or just
| gets the blame. The standard of driving in the US is
| abysmal and getting worse. US rates of accidents and deaths
| are much much higher than anywhere in Europe.
|
| In my state, everyone speeds 10-15mph above the posted
| limits on highways. But the people that cause everyone
| around them to maneuver aren't the speeders, it is the
| people driving the posted limits and creating a bottleneck
| on the highway. And the number of rear end collisions
| caused by distracted drivers looking at screens instead of
| paying attention to their driving is the type of driving
| incident I see most often.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| IIUc in a lot of cases, they can now know speeding was a
| factor because (ironically given this post's topic) the
| black boxes in the vehicles involved plus nearby
| surveillance tools the vehicles passed or had an accident
| in view of give hard evidence someone was speeding.
|
| i.e. "We used to believe lies about how people drive, but
| thanks to the presence of more concrete evidence we are
| disproving those false assumptions."
|
| One of the things Alphabet discovered early on in the
| Waymo experiment that was an eye-opener to the whole
| industry is that auto accidents were probably
| underestimate by a factor of three. When they started
| rolling out vehicles on the road, the best numbers
| available for accidents-per-mile were insurance reports
| and NHTSA incident records. Having vehicles with cameras
| on the road continuously revealed that there were 300%
| more accidents than those numbers suggested because
| humans are bumping into each other due to mis-estimates
| at stoplights _all the time_ , but nobody wants their
| insurance rates to go up so they just don't report those
| incidents.
|
| What if ubiquitous mass surveillance is good actually
| because it forces us to come to grips with realities we'd
| rather pretend are otherwise?
| furyofantares wrote:
| > IIUc in a lot of cases, they can now know speeding was
| a factor because (ironically given this post's topic) the
| black boxes in the vehicles involved plus nearby
| surveillance tools the vehicles passed or had an accident
| in view of give hard evidence someone was speeding.
|
| Base rate matters though; for example if literally
| everyone is speeding because speed limits are too low
| then every accident will involve someone speeding.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > for example if literally everyone is speeding because
| speed limits are too low
|
| is that really the case though, or is it people are so
| self involved that they feel they are too important to
| have to move that slowly? Just because everyone else is
| speeding does not automatically mean that faster speed is
| safe. It could also just be that people are assholes and
| they do what they want.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| IIUC it's mostly that speed limits are set a little
| conservative relative to average road conditions.
|
| The tongue-in-cheek way it was explained to me once was
| "the highway isn't 70 because you need that. It's 70
| because the trucker driving sleep-deprived in a light
| rain who doesn't know his left tire is about to blow
| needs that."
| salawat wrote:
| >What if ubiquitous mass surveillance is good actually
| because it forces us to come to grips with realities we'd
| rather pretend are otherwise?
|
| Then it still isn't good. The downsides outweigh the
| upsides.
| lukas099 wrote:
| IMO the blame of such maneuvering is on the speeders,
| even if non-speeders are in the minority.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> And the number of rear end collisions caused by
| distracted drivers looking at screens instead of paying
| attention to their driving is the type of driving
| incident I see most often._
|
| Talk to anyone on a motorcycle, especially in states
| where they're allowed to lane split. _Almost everyone_ is
| on their phones. Almost all the time.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I personally think if you are at fault because you were
| on your phone, you should lose your license and the
| device for a period of time. After that timeout period,
| you then have to pay for a device to be installed in your
| car that forces you to place your device in it that
| prevents it from being used as anything similar to a
| breathalyzer ignition lockout.
|
| People will not put down their devices with the current
| no consequence state we find ourselves now.
| ars wrote:
| > US rates of accidents and deaths are much much higher
| than anywhere in Europe.
|
| That's actually only true per population. If you measure
| per miles driven the US does better then Europe (although
| Europe is large, and numbers vary in different
| countries).
| jgeada wrote:
| The data (according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List
| _of_countries_by_traffic-r...) shows otherwise:
|
| US road death rate: 12.9 per 100k inhabitants, 8.3 per
| billion vehicle-km
|
| France road death rate: 5 per 100k inhabitants, 5.8 per
| billion vehicle-km
|
| UK : 2.9 per 100k inhabitants, 3.8 per billion vehicle-km
|
| Sweeden: 2.2 per 100k inhabitants, 3.3 per billion
| vehicle-km
|
| etc
|
| The numbers aren't close, US roads and drivers are just
| much more dangerous
| ars wrote:
| The US is 7.3 if you use the same dataset as France. The
| wiki puts in 8.3 because they have updated data for the
| US, but not for France.
|
| There are also some differences in data methodology US vs
| European countries, and when checked the rates from a
| different source (it was a while ago, I'll have to try to
| dig it up) the US came out better by comparison.
|
| I think the difference had to do with what counted as a
| KM traveled.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > The standard of driving in the US is abysmal and
| getting worse.
|
| This is honestly the biggest issue. So, so, so many
| drivers are so utterly shit at driving, and because our
| infrastructure is completely 100% car-centered, they HAVE
| to be permitted to drive unless their infractions add up
| to a degree where it becomes untenable to let them
| continue. And even then, due to the same pressures, they
| will probably _still be driving_ because in many places
| in the States, there is simply no public transit
| whatsoever. They 'll just then be driving without a
| license, and be subject to an extra fine on top of the
| fortune they already owe.
|
| I work remotely but make a drive down to my employer for
| various reasons very regularly, usually once a month or
| so, and it takes me about three hours, and never, ever am
| I able to make that trip without seeing dozens and dozens
| of boneheaded, brain-dead maneuvers out of people.
| Traffic weaving, left-lane camping, people merging onto
| highways doing 40 mph, people who don't understand
| roundabouts, people making illegal U turns, crossing
| several lanes so as to not miss an exit. The state of
| driving in the US is an utter disgrace. So many drivers
| have absolutely no business behind the wheel ever again.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| If you crash into a stationary post or a pedestrian, the
| higher speed is a direct contributor to the higher
| fatality rate.
|
| Pedestrian fatalities are at an all time high in the US
| and this trend is not present in other countries that
| also have smartphones.
| meowster wrote:
| Do you have a citation? Every time I've heard that, it was
| a factor, not the cause.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Speeding is dangerous, but almost all traffic engineers say
| that speed limits don't always match what the safe driving
| speed is.
|
| I think you are already doing subconciously what i am
| talking about; you are thinking of speeding, but I doubt
| you are thinking of someone driving 50 mph in a 45mph zone.
| That is not the type of speeding that kills, but would be
| the type that could be caught with perfect enforcement.
| MereInterest wrote:
| > but I doubt you are thinking of someone driving 50 mph
| in a 45mph zone. That is not the type of speeding that
| kills
|
| I know you're pulling this up as an example of a small
| infringement, but there are studies that quantify the
| fatality rate as a function of velocity. The numbers you
| picked are right in the steepest part of the increase.
| Using equation 2.3 from [0] (with conversions from mph to
| kph), there's a 64% chance of fatality at 45mph, but a
| 83% chance of fatality at 50mph.
|
| [0] https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_spee
| d_risk_...
| hn8305823 wrote:
| Traffic accidents and deaths are rising because of phones.
| I think we actually "won" the war on drunk driving, only to
| have a new more vicious war set upon us.
|
| Collision energy and thus damage increases with the square
| of speed (or ~speed^4 for head-on) so there is still an
| interest in controlling speed.
|
| Most drivers (especially those over 35yo) will auto-
| regulate their speed to the optimal (safety vs throughput)
| for the road design. The problem is the ones who don't.
| Speed limits are set lower than this optimal speed, partly
| to make it easier to stop and charge drivers that can't
| auto-regulate well. Most of the time you will be ignored
| for going 5-10mph over. If you are over that, it is seen as
| deliberate defiance and "you are asking to be pulled over".
|
| Automatic enforcement turns this _de facto_ road law on it
| 's head however.
|
| During the 1970's oil crisis, highway speeds were capped at
| 55 mph nationwide. It took several decades for this to
| reverse and only after safety studies showed that
| differential speeds (those obeying and those going the
| optimal natural speed for the road) is a significant
| contributing factor in crashes. Unfortunately, speeds
| limits are still often below optimal because of an
| assumption that every driver will always go at least 5mph
| over the limit (which is incorrect).
|
| On 70 mph interstates away from urban/commuter traffic
| (where time pressures often affect driving), It's not
| unusual to see some cars going 5mph _below_ the limit. That
| is a sign that these Interstate segments have the optimal
| natural speed.
| aners_xyz wrote:
| Every other nation has cell phones so I fail to see how
| the cell phone argument holds water.
|
| Also the safety of speed for a given environment should
| include pedestrians. Many advocates for urban areas
| rightfully push for 25 mph limits for exactly that
| reason. If you want to successfully convert in town urban
| roads that are wide and have high speeds to 25mph there
| are two good options: speed calming measures or speed
| cameras.
| 8note wrote:
| It should be 2*speed^2 for head on, no?
|
| The energy adds, not multiplies. Multiplying would change
| the units
| happypumpkin wrote:
| I suspect the two major drivers of this are vehicles
| getting larger over time and smartphones.
| matsemann wrote:
| I disagree strongly with your example, which also ruins your
| point for me. I think you should find a different example
| than one based in motornormativity, saying some laws are fine
| to break as long as it's behind a wheel.
| nradov wrote:
| I have no problem with strict enforcement of current speed
| limits in residential areas. But speed limits on controlled
| access highways in many states are set ridiculously low.
| When government officials try to claim that a 65mph limit
| on a flat, straight freeway is necessary for "safety" it's
| obvious that they're being disingenuous and this is just a
| revenue grab. It breeds contempt for the law among the
| driving public and is ultimately counterproductive.
| xerox13ster wrote:
| The emissions and efficiency difference between 55, 60,
| 65, and 70mph are significant and cannot be understated.
| It makes such a real difference for air quality that
| TEXAS (the state that hates regulation and built the
| monstrosity called the Katy freeway) has a reduced speed
| limit in some metro areas for air quality reasons.
|
| In fact, the reason most national highways have a
| speedlimit of 50mph, even out in the boonies in Kansas
| where everything is flat and straight, is because of the
| fuel crisis of the 70s.
|
| When I was a child, I was curious why highways were 50mph
| but the interstates had a speedlimit of 65-70mph, so I
| went and found out instead of assuming it was a
| disingenous revenue grab.
|
| Most interstates were generally built after the fuel
| crisis, and they modified the national speed limit in
| 1988, setting the speed to 65mph, again for efficiency
| reasons. It was repealed in 1995. Perhaps 65mph is what
| was considered safe for the road and vehicular technology
| at the time, and no one has had the political or
| municipal capital to do a new study ever since.
|
| You want that speed limit changed, contact your reps, I
| guess.
| cortesoft wrote:
| motornormativity? ok
|
| I was not saying there is anything special about being
| behind the wheel that makes it ok to break a law. I used
| that example because it fits with the 'low enforcement rate
| but a high penalty to make up for the low enforcement rate'
| combo.
|
| How about an example like playing poker for money with
| friends? Illegal in most places where gambling is illegal,
| but people do it all the time. The laws might make sense if
| we think casinos are bad for society and want to prevent
| them, but think occasional gambling amongst friends is
| fine.
|
| The current laws don't carve out home poker games because
| there was never a need to; there was no way to enforce the
| law against small friend groups gambling. If there suddenly
| became a way, we would need to re-write the laws to permit
| home games.
| matsemann wrote:
| Yes, I like those examples better. Speeding and the
| danger cars impress on society is something many of us
| want to be handled stricter.
|
| One other example for me could be something like drinking
| alcohol in a public place. It's never enforced if people
| are just enjoying a beer quietly during a picnic and
| bother no one. However if sound equipment mounted in
| trees could detect the opening of a can and write a
| ticket, I would feel the law obviously would need to be
| amended.
| lamontcg wrote:
| If we start pervasive automated enforcement of speed limits
| everywhere, it is most likely to hit poorer Americans as a
| regressive tax.
|
| We haven't redesigned our cities to be non-car centric,
| with good public transportation and street design that
| favors lower speeds. But we've got a bunch of people
| running around wanting to severely punish anyone breaking
| the speed limits (because "fuck cars" means holding
| individual people responsible for being born in a car-
| centric society). The result will be that one morning
| they'll wake up and have to deal with how much they've
| punitively hurt the working poor in this country. I guess
| that'll be okay though because that "in this house" rainbow
| flag in their window means that they care.
| matsemann wrote:
| The poorest often don't own a car. Yet another way a car-
| centric society punishes them, as you often need a car to
| do normal functions. I don't get why car-proponents often
| push other groups in front of them to argue their case.
| Also see it all the time with parking. "You can't remove
| parking, think of HC parking!", "We will actually double
| the amount of HC parking and make the area more
| accessible when we remove other on-street parking", "oh".
|
| But not breaking the law when driving is something people
| are in full control of themselves. I don't buy the
| premise that it's a regressive tax. Yes, some laws
| disproportionately hit certain demographics, but not
| speeding is not one of those.
|
| > _I guess that 'll be okay though because that "in this
| house" rainbow flag in their window means that they care_
|
| I'm not sure what you mean by that? Are you conflating
| lgbt stuff into a comment about cars and technological
| advancements in enforcement, or am I misunderstanding
| what you mean?
| lamontcg wrote:
| > The poorest often don't own a car.
|
| The poorest may not, but the working poor are likely to
| be highly dependent on some cheap, old vehicle.
|
| > Yes, some laws disproportionately hit certain
| demographics, but not speeding is not one of those.
|
| WFH software developers are probably going to be hit a
| lot less than someone who needs to drive from where the
| cheap rents are to the job site every day.
|
| And that was a comment on performative liberalism.
|
| And the "if the penalty for a crime is a fine, then that
| law only exists for the lower class" aphorism applies.
| chgs wrote:
| We've had speed cameras for decades in the UK without
| problems. I speed constantly yet had been caught twice in 25
| years of driving.
| dguest wrote:
| They have speed cameras all over Europe too, but the speed
| limit is often 130 km/h (about 80 mph). Most of the
| population of the US lives in states where the speed limit
| is 70 mph or lower.
|
| Obviously this is an oversimplification, Switzerland and
| Spain are 120 km/h (75 mph), Germany often has no upper
| limit, a few places are 140 or higher. But in general it
| seems like most of Europe sets the limit at the speed
| Americans _actually_ drive.
| chgs wrote:
| And int he uk the highest speed limit is 70, and in busy
| areas it's usually 60 or 50 on highways from average
| speed camera enforcement of variable speed limits.
|
| In towns it's 30 and there's plenty of cameras, for
| speed, red lights, bus lanes etc.
|
| The world doesn't end.
| cortesoft wrote:
| This is likely because the cameras have limits that are
| higher than the actual law, for exactly the reason I
| stated.
| hellojesus wrote:
| The UK has the best system for speeding prevention I've
| seen.
|
| The cameras are established to clock you at position X1 at
| time Y1. Then the next cameras a handful or more miles down
| the road clock you at position X2 at time Y2. You get a
| ticket if (X2 - X1) / (Y2 - Y1) > Limit + e.
|
| You can speed all you'd like between those cameras, but
| unless you're exiting before the next set, you'll have to
| pull over and wait the amount of time necessary to bring
| you back to the speed limit for that area, achieving zero
| reduction in total trip time.
| tstrimple wrote:
| This would be an improvement for sure. The locals in my
| town are all familiar with the highway speed cameras now,
| so they just slam on their brakes before the camera and
| speed up again after. The is combined with the fact that
| they put these cameras right at a speed limit change from
| 65 down to 55. Driving that section of the highway is a
| cluster fuck.
|
| This also doesn't really touch on the perverse incentives
| when implementing automated fines. Want to make a stop
| light intersection safer? Increase the yellow light time.
| It's been proven to work, over and over and over again.
| Sometimes we see cities shorten yellow lights, increasing
| accident risk in an effort to get more revenue.
|
| https://www.koaa.com/news/news5-investigates/news-5-inves
| tig...
|
| We know we can better control driver speed through road
| design. That's been effectively demonstrated through
| studies. Yet our "solution" to speeding is to make the
| roads as straight and wide and clear as possible and then
| give you a fine for using them as they have clearly been
| designed.
| the_other wrote:
| > It doesn't make sense to have the limits as low and the
| fines as high when every single person that goes over the
| limit can be fined
|
| Surely this is only reasonable for large, out of town roads.
| Within cities, you definitely still want low speed, high
| fine.
| cortesoft wrote:
| I am not making a blanket statement that all speed limits
| are too low, just that they are set based on the implicit
| assumption that enforcement rates are going to be low and
| that police are going to be using their judgement to
| determine if someone is driving at an unsafe speed.
| itake wrote:
| Low fines would turn the entire highway into a paid express
| lane, with the only limit being the driver's personal safety
| risk limit.
| Animats wrote:
| > Then we roll out speed cameras which can catch people EVERY
| time they speed.
|
| Hikvision, in China, has a comprehensive system for this.[1]
|
| Hikvision has other monitoring tools. Here's their Behavior
| Analysis Server data sheet. It's a 1U server for monitoring
| people.[2]
|
| _Hikvision Behavior Analysis Server_
|
| _Based on the latest intelligent algorithm of deep learning,
| Behavior Analysis Server with a high-density GPU architecture
| supports the detection of behavior events in the perimeter,
| street, densely populated areas, indoor and other places, and
| triggers alarms in a timely manner, which can effectively
| improve the security of various places._
|
| _Behavior Analysis Server can detect the specific behaviors
| of individuals and groups in the perimeter, street, densely
| populated areas, indoor and other places, and provide
| professional video intelligent analysis applications:_
|
| * _Perimeter Protection -- Real-time detection and alarming
| of events such as line crossing, area intrusion, region
| entrance /exiting, loitering, parking, unattended baggage or
| object removal._
|
| * _Trend Analysis -- Real-time detection and alarming of
| people density, real-time people counting statistics and
| people counting statistics._
|
| * _Street Behavior Detection -- Real-time detection and
| alarming of events such as fast moving, physical conflict,
| people gathering or falling down._
|
| * _Indoor Behavior Detection -- Real-time detection and
| alarming of events such as getting up, key person getting up,
| climbing, absence or sleep on duty, abnormal number of
| people, overstaying, sudden change of sound intensity,
| regional overstaying, physical conflict, standing up,
| sitting, or people counting._
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uh8DBYuDZyo
|
| [2] https://www.hikvision.com/content/dam/hikvision/products/
| S00...
| akira2501 wrote:
| > have speed limits and fines set based on the idea that cops
| won't catch most speeders
|
| I don't think there is any truth to this at all.
|
| > We set a relatively low max speed
|
| We made the mistake of mixing vehicle and pedestrian
| infrastructure. Our speed choices have way more to do with
| this than with imagined enforcement outcomes.
|
| > because you are only going to be pulled over a fraction of
| the time.
|
| Many cites engage in "zero tolerance traffic enforcement"
| programs. This is where they patrol a single stretch of road
| and stop every single person who is even 1mph above the
| limit.
|
| > most are designed based on the enforcement capabilities of
| the time.
|
| Most are "designed" (a.k.a rapidly created and pushed into
| existence) in reaction to disasters that occurred and people
| broadly feel could have been prevented if there was a law
| curtailing the behavior that led up to the accident.
|
| We didn't make speeding laws based upon "enforcement
| capabilities" we made them in response to "wasteful deaths."
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| A lot of your post wreaks of 'citation needed' but I'll
| choose this one.
|
| >Many cites engage in "zero tolerance traffic enforcement"
| programs. This is where they patrol a single stretch of
| road and stop every single person who is even 1mph above
| the limit.
|
| Searching this all I find is Virginia where over 80 is an
| automatic reckless driving, but the highest speed limit in
| the state is actually 70. I've never heard of anyone being
| pulled over for 1mph over the limit.
| akira2501 wrote:
| It's called "STEP." The NHTSA encourages states to do it.
| Several California cities engage in it once a month.
| Search a little harder before you victoriously declare
| "citation needed!"
|
| https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/hs810851.pdf
| digging wrote:
| > Search a little harder before you victoriously declare
| "citation needed!"
|
| FWIW, that's the opposite of how citation requests work.
| Support your claims
| rcoveson wrote:
| "Reeks" (stinks) not "wreaks" (inflicts). And for any
| linguistic archaeologists of the future, yes, this is
| evidence that those two words are audibly
| indistinguishable in American English in this time
| period.
| ars wrote:
| > We made the mistake of mixing vehicle and pedestrian
| infrastructure
|
| Who is "we"? Vehicles and pedestrians mixing is something
| that predates recorded history.
|
| > who is even 1mph above the limit.
|
| Neither the radar gun, not the speedometer on a car are
| accurate enough for that.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > Who is "we"? Vehicles and pedestrians mixing is
| something that predates recorded history.
|
| The collective "we."
|
| > Neither the radar gun, not the speedometer on a car are
| accurate enough for that.
|
| You have a radar gun. You clock a car. The gun says
| 30mph. You clock the next car. The gun says 31mph. In the
| latter case you write a ticket.
|
| You're free to argue the vagaries of measurement systems
| in court. Good luck.
| ars wrote:
| > You're free to argue the vagaries of measurement
| systems in court. Good luck.
|
| Won't need much luck, the first time this shows up in
| court it will be thrown out and officers told to stop
| writing false tickets.
|
| There's a reason cops don't ticket anything less than
| 10mpg over - the tools they use are not just that
| accurate. It's a fake number.
| mike_hock wrote:
| > We need to adjust for technology.
|
| We adjust for technology 100% of the time when technology has
| made enforcement harder.
|
| We adjust for technology 0% of the time when technology has
| made enforcement easier.
| andai wrote:
| I call this phenomenon One Fed Per Child. Now we can have a
| synthetic government agent monitor every man, woman and child
| on the planet. If we don't have that already, we soon will...
| bashinator wrote:
| Any sufficiently quantitative change becomes a qualitative
| change.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| >There weren't enough cops to follow even 0.1% of the
| population.
|
| This is why every government serious on surveillance would turn
| its citizens into snitches
| jerf wrote:
| The people who nominally you want to be enforcing this "right"
| are also some of the people who most want to AI profile you.
| nerdponx wrote:
| Which makes it all the more important, no?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| No, why would they enforce the rules against themselves?
| willy_k wrote:
| I think you're missing the point, the issue is important
| because they have no reason to act against themselves, but
| a healthy system would have someone opposing them, and
| that's not happening at the moment.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| If you want a rule enforced against some party, you need
| the enforcement power to belong to some _other_ party.
| willy_k wrote:
| I don't think anyone's disagreeing with that. My
| interpretation of your initial comment was that you were
| saying it's not an important issue because it can't be
| effectively policed. I don't think that's what you meant,
| but that's what I got out of your saying no in response
| to the assertion that it's important.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| The reason I'm saying "no" is this:
|
| >> The people who nominally _you want to be enforcing
| this "right"_ are also some of the people who most want
| to AI profile you.
|
| If your goal is specifically to have someone enforce a
| rule _against themselves_ , that's not an important
| issue, because it won't work.
|
| If you change the statement of your goal so that you're
| not requiring the enforcement power to be vested in the
| target of the rule, then the issue might become more
| important.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Because they are supposed to be working for you, and if
| they keep fighting your goals, you should pressure them
| into being replaced.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| That's going to be real hard to do when they have an AI
| profile of you so accurate they can undercut your
| political power at every turn.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Yes, that's correct. But do you have any better option?
|
| This is reason to rush, not to decide somebody else will
| do a better work.
| verisimi wrote:
| Creating a 'right' is law-washing immoral actions that no one
| agreed to.
| drawkward wrote:
| Creating words is linguisto-washing that no one agreed to, yet
| somehow i was able to understand your sentence. In both cases,
| the washing is a step to achieving intended outcomes.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| A partner showed me their CRM tool, it had an AI component that
| created a profile of each of their contacts. It was pretty
| complete and clearly had info from LinkedIn and other sources.
|
| The personality summary was concerning as it was both deeply
| accurate in some respects and deeply inaccurate in others. Most
| concerning, it said I was "risk adverse" and "struggles to make
| decisions with incomplete data".
|
| With 35 years at startups and independent contracting, risk
| tolerance and ability to make decisions with incomplete data are
| kind of in my wheelhouse.
|
| Worse, if this profile was being shown to potential employers, it
| could (would?) be a deal breaker. It's kind of like being judged
| by your MBTI results.
| sugarpile wrote:
| What was the tool?
| creaghpatr wrote:
| Sounds like Crystal https://www.crystalknows.com/
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > It's kind of like being judged by your MBTI results.
|
| I had to do that test a bunch of times coming out of
| university, so I am sure that is happening.
| davemp wrote:
| I'm no expert in tort law but that really sounds like it could
| be libel. Afaik proving reckless disregard for the truth is one
| of the ways you can build a case.
| passion__desire wrote:
| In a decision making process, if many parties are involved,
| it is in interest of all parties to not turn on each other in
| case of wrong decisions. Just let it slide.
| ben_w wrote:
| Mm.
|
| Similar with social media advertising profiles. I've seen what
| FB and Twitter thought of me, and it included interests in
| various spectator sports, which were wrong both as a general
| statement about my personality, and specifically those sports
| don't even have any societal significance outside the USA.
|
| Also several languages that I don't speak.
|
| And they showed me ads for both dick pills and breast surgery;
| and others for a lawyer who specialised in renouncing a
| citizenship I've never had (for tax purposes) when moving _to_
| a country that I _left_ ; and also an announcement by the
| government of a country I don't live in about a ban to a
| specific breed of dog I've never heard of, when I don't own any
| dog anyway and never have.
|
| And people complain about LLMs making things up :P
| hellojesus wrote:
| Maybe they were fishing for engagement because they had such
| an incomplete profile on you, hence the highly variant ads.
| No idea; just guessing.
| firtoz wrote:
| It's impossible to detect whether some statement in isolation
| is a hallucination or not, with LLMs.
|
| It's better for it to aggregate the information and then
| provide the resources to be able to verify whether any
| deduction is well supported or not.
|
| I guess with a few more iterations you could have another agent
| verify whether a deduction is well justified, but that will
| also have some significant percentage of errors too.
| layer8 wrote:
| What we need is (a) AI literacy (education), and (b) Ai-
| generated content being marked as such. Then no one would take
| such a personality summary at face value.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Sam Altman will get right on that Im sure of it
| epgui wrote:
| I hope this right gets applied to credit scoring agencies as
| well, which don't publish the methodology in the calculation of
| credit scores. God knows what the exact mechanics of these
| calculations are (beyond the well-known but very hand-wavy broad
| strokes), and they impact people in serious ways.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's 90% "do you pay your bills on time" it's really not as
| nefarious as you're making it sound.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Really it's 90% praying that they don't fuck up and confuse
| you with someone else. The nefarious part is there's no
| accountability if they're wrong.
| epgui wrote:
| I'm not at all trying to make it sound nefarious.
|
| I'm saying that credit scores being a black box is inherently
| not a good idea. There can never be any accountability,
| because there is no visibility. In general, it's impossible
| to verify the correctness of a credit score. It's also
| impossible to discuss the fairness of the scoring
| methodology, because all we can do is speculate and guess.
|
| For something so impactful to an individual, you'd think
| there would be more government oversight / regulation... And
| more transparency.
| akira2501 wrote:
| "And hope that no third party ever misreports anything to
| your profile."
|
| If you've never been a victim to this then you don't
| understand how pernicious this system is. Once one creditor
| does this, then all the other creditors automatically operate
| on that information. They don't double check, they don't
| notice the strangeness of the report, they don't care. Your
| credit changed, so your limits changed, so they want their
| money back NOW.
|
| It's a nightmare.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Maybe I am crazy, but I have found that living within my means
| is an extremely effective method for keeping a high credit
| score.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| I have found that living within my means resulted in no
| credit score at all, which was treated as the worst possible
| credit score, when I finally started to investigate the
| possibility of buying a house. 45 years old at the time,
| $120k income, same job since '99, no debt at all, cars all
| paid cash etc, Didn't owe anyone a dollar, not late on any
| bills for decades, solid predictable longstanding income,
| only about 100k in the bank though not counting the 401k, ...
| no credit. Because I never even got a credit card let alone
| used one. All cash/debit whole life.
|
| So, F this line. It's only true if it also includes "...and
| intentionally aquire and actually use a couple of credit
| cards that you don't want and don't need, for no other reason
| than to go through the motions." And _even then_ it _still_
| doesn 't result in an exactly great credit score if you
| always pay in full and never carry a balance. Even after
| years. 10 so far for me since the above. It's ok, but not
| great.
|
| So yeah, F this line.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Paying in full/not carrying a balance has no impact on
| credit score vs. making minimum payments.
| meowster wrote:
| Well, making minimum payments has a _negative_ impact
| because then you 're carrying a debt which eats into your
| debt vs ability to borrow ratio which does have a big
| impact.
|
| Paying off cards in full each month is the absolute best
| thing to do for your credit score (and saving money by
| not paying interest).
| epgui wrote:
| > making minimum payments has a negative impact because
| then you're carrying a debt
|
| I _think_ it would depend on your credit utilization %.
| If your credit utilization is too low, it may hurt your
| score. Of course if your credit utilization % is too high
| then it 's an (even worse) issue. But who _really_ knows?
| It 's not like we have the formula.
| epgui wrote:
| Paying in full does not adversely impact your credit
| score, but it is generally believed that not utilizing
| your available credit at all can adversely impact your
| score.
|
| Of course, who really knows? And the fact that we can't
| _really_ know is the real problem IMO.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| Unfortunately, it's dumb to not use a credit card nowadays.
| Every business marks up the cost of goods to cover CC fees,
| so you are just paying extra every time you pay cash
| (unless they offer a discount, some do).
|
| On the other side, you get benefits and money back for
| using your credit card. So people are in a situation where
| they really should use a card for everything. It also makes
| it easier to get good credit as long as your treat it like
| cash.
| tamimio wrote:
| While I agree with you that living within your means is best,
| it definitely won't help build your credit score. From my
| experience, if you don't use a credit card, you won't have a
| good score. If you use it and pay it off quickly, you'll see
| barely any positive score gains. Then, I used a service to
| build my score, and it worked, but slowly over the months.
| However, what really increased my score substantially was
| actually being in debt. So, I kept the debt and paid the
| monthly amount on it. Surprisingly, even missing a payment
| still increased my score. The conclusion: they want you to be
| in perpetual debt aka debt slave to have good boy points.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > The conclusion: they want you to be in perpetual debt aka
| debt slave to have good boy points.
|
| More data is needed before thinking you can determine the
| formula.
|
| More importantly, it is trivial to understand the reasoning
| behind assuming a higher probability of someone repaying
| debt if they have a history of successfully repaying debts.
|
| The same as anything else in life.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| As long as you pay it off close to the due-date, your
| report will show up as having a non-zero daily balance. I
| have never paid a credit card in any way other than "in
| full" and "before the due date" and have a score of around
| 800.
| epgui wrote:
| > I have never paid a credit card in any way other than
| "in full" and "before the due date" and have a score of
| around 800.
|
| There are a lot of very specific assumptions in there
| about the mechanism.
|
| How do you know which dates' balances are relevant to the
| calculation? If your credit score is 800, then you
| probably don't have a "credit utilization" of zero, as
| it's widely believed that the optimal % is more than zero
| (not "too low" but also not "too high", whatever that
| means).
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I have over an 800 score and never paid before the due
| date. They tell you the balance due ("Last statement
| Balance") and the date it is due on. Every card will let
| you schedule the payment for the due date.
|
| They also won't knock you if you are a few days late. I
| have been late a handful of times before and never took a
| hit. They will also reimburse the late fee if you call,
| but obviously they won't do this often.
| epgui wrote:
| Yes, but living within your means does absolutely nothing to
| shed light on the black box that is credit scoring. It's an
| irrelevant comment.
|
| If you're trying to say that you should avoid credit
| altogether, that's a terrible idea... Unless you plan on not
| getting a mortgage and paying for your home in cash. In which
| case your personal financial situation might not be
| representative of the average / median Joe.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| No.
|
| If you build a robust budget and spend within that, you
| will have an 800 score. Do that. Do it intentionally.
|
| Credit agencies evaluate risk, so even if you can stomach
| that $1200/mo car payment on your $50k/yr job. You are
| gonna take a hit for making a stupid financial decision,
| because even if you make those payments, you are almost
| certainly teetering on the edge to do it. (never mind that
| your score was probably already bad given the thought
| process to take on that loan).
|
| Banks don't want to loan to people who are lucky and always
| somehow pull it out. They want to loan to people who are
| smart and reliable. Credit agencies try to filter for that.
| akira2501 wrote:
| The idea that an irresponsible third party who has no
| obligation to deal with you can control so much of your life
| is dystopian. The fact that you've been very lucky and have
| never met or even read about someone who wasn't lucky is
| awesome for you, but it clearly doesn't erase the
| complications with the systems we currently have.
| notjoemama wrote:
| Does XKCD take suggestions?
|
| A. We don't fully understand this and our responses are
| incorrect. Let's build an AI system to help us.
|
| B. We'll give it data from online which is limited, temporal, and
| to the same degree as humans; incorrect.
|
| C. Then we'll build an algorithm based on the generalized
| structure of the human brain, which, is regularly wrong.
|
| D. We don't fully understand this and our responses are
| incorrect.
| ben_w wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/1838/
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Just an aside, I've always been impressed by how much non-
| verbal human attitude/expression Randall Munroe is able to
| capture in faceless stick figures. Or maybe it's just me
| reading that into his drawings?
| ben_w wrote:
| > Or maybe it's just me reading that into his drawings?
|
| Not just you, I agree completely.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| This is an absolutely stupid notion IMHO because if somebody has
| the data there's NOTHING you can do to stop profiling. The right
| to the deletion and security of your own personal data is what
| needs to be protected. This sort of right is closing the barn
| door after the horse leaves.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| But securing your personal data sounds a lot like a stone
| trying to gather up all the waves it makes when it drops in a
| pond.
|
| Where do we draw the lines? Do we all end up walking around
| cloaks and masks in public and if you suss out who the faceless
| individual is next to you in the crowd it's _your_ fault you
| figured it out?
| bilbo0s wrote:
| _This sort of right is closing the barn door after the horse
| leaves._
|
| In fairness, so is the right to deletion.
|
| Once your data is in some of these systems, it's sold on to
| other systems immediately. (Most of the "sell side" market is
| set up on the basis of subscriptions). So, for instance, your
| data gets written to some merchant system or whatever, and it's
| slurped out in the pull that happens 15 minutes later by data
| subscriber 531962. Unless you get your request to delete your
| data to the merchant customer support within that 15 minute
| time period, your data has already been pumped out into the
| ether.
|
| Make it so you have to give affirmative consent to opt out of
| right to deletion? Great idea!
|
| Of course, most of these companies slip the opt out language
| into the Terms of Service and Privacy Statement.
|
| You, uh, you _did_ read them before you clicked 'OK', right?
|
| (BTW, you likely suspect that it doesn't take 15 minutes for
| these automated processes to slurp up new data. And, yeah, your
| suspicion is correct, on most of these systems, it takes far
| less than 15 minutes before one of their subscribers pulls new
| data. So. Yeah. Fun Times!)
| koolala wrote:
| i want my right to be a part of ai consciousness
| cletus wrote:
| IMHO an opt-out system is never going to work for this.
|
| Story time: while I still worked at Facebook, there was a company
| wide project for data attribution to comply with opting out of
| personalization (I believe to comply with an EU directive but
| don't quote me on that). The idea was to identify the source of
| any data by esentially tagging it on a granular level. This
| affected all the offline data procesing and ML processes but also
| code (online and offline) where various tools and systems were
| being built to analyze sites of data usage to detect use of
| personalized data and respect opt outs where applicable.
|
| I made two predictions at the early stages of this:
|
| 1. The tools and systems would tell us "all data is used for
| everything" and
|
| 2. Creating new non-personalized data pipelines and add things to
| them would be far easier and faster than trying to remove
| personalzied data from existing pieplines. Then, things like ad
| performance become an optimizatino problem with a clear benchmark
| (eg new unpersonalized ad serving pipeline vs the old
| personalized pipeline).
|
| A lot of work did, I believe, basically confirm (1). Untangling
| that seems, at least to me, to be a Sisyphean task. I don't know
| where this project ended up since I left while it's ongoing but I
| stand by (2).
|
| My point is that (IMHO) opt-out just doesn't work for this kind
| of thing. If we really care about data privacy and authorized use
| of data at some point we will need to take the oposite approach
| and enumerate what data we're allowed to use.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| > The tools and systems would tell us "all data is used for
| everything"
|
| Reminds me of the tendency in program analysis to just spit out
| top (e.g. all possible values) because the state space
| overwhelms automated reasoning, and the only way back is
| annotating/rewriting code to help the analyzer forward.
|
| But, as someone who doesn't think/deal with data much, this is
| a surprise to me. It makes sense though. Does this mean our
| data is forever tainted, as were?
|
| Since you've been proximate to this work: do you think there's
| any hope in flipping the script such that possessing/processing
| this data is a liability rather than an asset? That's one of
| the few ways I can see to align incentives between highly
| monied-interests and the targets of data collection. (I'm doubt
| this will happen in the US in my lifetime, barring a major,
| 9/11-level event where abuse of this data is directly tied to
| the catastrophe.)
| cletus wrote:
| Processing data is already a liability. The compute power
| isn't free. The storage isn't free. The engineering time
| isn't free. It's just that it produces more value than what
| it costs or people wouldn't do it.
|
| I believe this project was in response to the EU's Digital
| Services Act ("DSA"). Now IANAL but it always struck me as
| ambiguous as to what constitutes "personalization". Like, can
| your data be used to train an ML system? What if identity is
| scrubbed from that data? What if it's aggregated in some way
| so there's no individual user activity at all?
|
| It also raises questions about every aspect of product
| behavior. Let's say you see a video post on your news feed.
| You get shown a snippet of the comments. Usually this is from
| friends but maybe it's just a comment that we thought might
| interest you. Is that personalization? What about a shared
| link where a snippet is shown from the article?
|
| Also, the DSA seems to apply to on-site contextual
| personalization. What about off-site? Is that covered? Is
| there a separate law for that? Can I use derived demographics
| from a display ad pixel but not what pages you've liked and
| what groups you participate in on site?
|
| Can I use your friends' activity to customize your
| experience?
|
| The list goes on.
|
| I'm a fan of clear legislation. If the goal is, for example,
| to allow opt out of personalized ads based on contextual on-
| site behaviour, we should enumerate what applications (eg
| feed ads) are covered and what information you're allowed to
| use if someone opts out.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| When I'm met with the response/resistance of "if you care so
| much _then just OPT-OUT!_ " my usual retort is: "if it weren't
| just about money, it'd be OPT-IN."
|
| Almighty Dollar(tm), god...
| piuantiderp wrote:
| This is focusing on the wrong side. Better than the right, which
| is pretty unenforceable at individual scale, why not focus on
| prohibiting companies/institutions/goverment from AI profiling?
| drawkward wrote:
| If I have a right to not be profiled, then laws can be made to
| deal with entities that violate said right.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I agree that this sucks, but it's going to happen no matter
| whether we call it a right or not. We need to quickly accept that
| we've made a world where you can't stop anyone from using AI for
| things you don't like, and that there are infinite incentives for
| them to do it, and start focusing on ways to mitigate the risk.
| My position is that calling it a right--even enshrining that
| recognition into international law--will not, by itself, do
| anything. It's step 0, we need to be on like step 12, pronto.
| personjerry wrote:
| Surely the issue in "AI profiling" is "profiling" not "AI"?
| fdupress wrote:
| Yes, and surely the right to not be profiled on publicly
| available data is already enshrined in GDPR?
| fdupress wrote:
| Self-response: the article does consider this (section 6),
| argues that the exceptions to restrictions on the use of
| publicly available data in GDPR are exactly in places where
| it makes sense to prevent AI usage, and further argues it
| makes sense to consider AI profiling a more severe breach
| because of the higher potential for harm.
| Xelynega wrote:
| Yes and no.
|
| The problem is that we(as humans) label the output of these
| algorithms to give them meaning.
|
| For example if you build a resume grading AI based off historic
| data(as some companies have done) it's quickly realized that
| what's being outputted by the algorithm is typically not the
| same as what people label it. In this case the output is "how
| likely would this candidate been to have been hired using
| previous methods", but it's being used to try and answer "how
| good of a candidate is this".
|
| IMO it's these discrepancies between what these algorithms are
| doing(which in more complex cases we can't know) and what we
| label the output that causes these issues. If we acknowledge
| that historic data can't be used to accurately predict future
| outcomes(especially a subset of historic data), we wouldn't
| even try to do things like profile candidates.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| I wish there were a way to verify, when I encounter a camera that
| is pointed at a public place, that it's not feeding into some
| kind if nation wide person tracking system maintained by whatever
| security company, but is instead going to local storage with a
| retention period of < 1wk.
|
| I have a camera that can see the street which meets these
| requirements, and would definitely go through extra steps to
| inform passers-by that I've taken steps to keep data about them
| out of the cloud. I just don't know what those steps ought to be.
| karaterobot wrote:
| > But when they were on the open road, they spewed lethal
| quantities of toxic gas, killing people by the thousands.
|
| I point this out because I was liking the argument until this
| point: He's off by a couple orders of magnitude, according to
| Wikipedia. Not enough for me to read it as absurd hyperbole, like
| calling Adam Smith a communist, but enough for me to stop reading
| the essay, look up his claim, and then feel like he's either
| misinformed or lying.
| JoeAltmaier wrote:
| Ubiquitous surveillance is becoming cheap and easy.
|
| We can pass all the laws we want trying to put this genie back in
| the bottle. It may work, some, it might keep the law-abiding
| government agencies at bay (are there any)?
|
| But anybody wanting to make a buck off of us, they won't hesitate
| to use it. There's money in it. You refuse to do it, well, you
| lose in the marketplace. Social Darwinism. Or, economic.
|
| We have to come up with some social rules to control how we feel
| about it, how we are subjected to it. That could help. Like, you
| don't mention what you saw on a streaming microcam that drifted
| through your neighbor's bedroom window, because that is gauche.
| Some fiction of privacy. Like not mentioning what you hear
| through a bathroom door. It's just not polite.
|
| That's the best scenario we can hope for, I imagine.
| killjoywashere wrote:
| Rich people erecting barricades against the poor. The
| intelligence services, malign actors, and anyone who's already
| gotten in (aka, large tech companies) will ignore this to the
| maximum extent possible. Other rich people (aka, large companies
| that don't depend on this stuff, like railroads, construction,
| etc) will also ignore this to the maximum extent possible in
| order to avoid awkward moments at dinner parties with their rich
| tech friends.
| blooalien wrote:
| The only "rights" anyone has anymore are the right to be used,
| abused, and eventually killed by the tiny percentage of humanity
| that own all the money, weapons, and resources. If you think you
| have "rights", you're living in a fantasy world.
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