[HN Gopher] Colorado has a first-in-the-nation law for AI - but ...
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Colorado has a first-in-the-nation law for AI - but what will it
do?
Author : mooreds
Score : 32 points
Date : 2024-06-24 12:16 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cpr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cpr.org)
| geodel wrote:
| For starters, catch the violators and fine them.
| flaque wrote:
| > Whether (people) get insurance, or what the rate for their
| insurance is, or legal decisions or employment decisions, whether
| you get fired or hired, could be up to an AI algorithm
|
| This is a bit like trying to regulate horseshoes while everyone
| else is talking about speed limits & seat belts. Both parties say
| the word "carriage" and "passenger", but they have completely
| different ideas in their heads about what is about to happen.
| ForHackernews wrote:
| Same thing the Colorado law that required employers to include
| salaries in job ads did: exclude Colorado residents.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| How are Colorado banks, landlords, and employers going to
| exclude their customers and employees?
|
| Right now the law just asks for disclosure and sets up a human
| appeal process for AI based decisions.
| jmclnx wrote:
| Yes, for local small business jobs you are correct. But these
| laws could cause large multinationals to leave Colorado.
|
| Plus, in reality, banks really do not "need" tellers since
| most people get direct deposit, use debit/credit cards and
| phones for transactions. So large banks could leave too. I
| remember reading somewhere banks do not really like saving
| accounts since most people keep a small balance in them.
|
| With that said, I wish the laws Colorado has for AI and
| salaries could be nation wide.
| mattwad wrote:
| You have to start somewhere. There's now 13 states that require
| pay transparency, and more that are considering it.
| https://www.govdocs.com/pay-transparency-laws/
| soared wrote:
| I've never seen a job excluding Colorado residents, and I live
| in Denver and search for jobs.
|
| Employers just ignore it for remote work, or put a really big
| range. Big ranges are still useful since it's always enough to
| make a decision on whether to apply or not.
| lelandfe wrote:
| I did see Colorado excluded, and even worked for a (Not Good)
| company that did it. I haven't seen any examples this year,
| however, likely because California and New York followed
| suit.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| When it first went into effect there were remote job listings
| that suddenly added exclusions for Coloradans. Also listings
| that were removed and re-added but with the exclusion added.
| My wife was in the middle of getting interviewed by Oracle
| when the law came into effect (she was on the last of several
| rounds of interviews), they dropped her and the listing and
| reposted it the next week barring people from Colorado from
| applying.
|
| I haven't seen this in a while, though.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| The ads I've seen now exclude multiple states. At some point it
| just gets silly.
| yuliyp wrote:
| So this actually sounds like a realistic approach at managing the
| dangers of AI. It ensures that people have some sort of recourse
| against algorithms deciding to make their life miserable. This
| feels like an extension of similar approaches used in credit:
| credit rating agencies have to allow you to look at the data
| used, and are required to have flows for people to challenge the
| data there that may be harming them.
|
| Certainly it's a very different approach from people trying to
| mandate that AIs must be designed in ways so that they can't be
| used for bad stuff (which to me feels like a fundamentally broken
| approach).
| tensor wrote:
| It's unfortunate that these laws focus on AI. Why isn't it
| illegal to use traditional algorithms that have bias? Why aren't
| there regulations ensuring bias testing when humans themselves
| make decisions?
|
| In all cases the bias originates from human behaviour. The one
| advantage of AI being used is that now that bias is surfaced. But
| it's always been there, which is why the machine learning
| algorithms learn it. It's just that no one typically looks at the
| data in aggregate prior to AI.
|
| In any case, these rules should not be scoped to AI in my
| opinion. They should include algorithms and also require bias
| testing for teams of humans making decisions. If anything, I'd
| trust an AI system that has been analyzed for bias over a human
| making a decision.]
| carbocation wrote:
| The behavior should be the start and the end of the regulation.
| No need to specify AI, algorithms, etc, at all.
| doe_eyes wrote:
| > In all cases the bias originates from human behaviour. The
| one advantage of AI being used is that now that bias is
| surfaced.
|
| I think that's an odd way to look at it. The bias originates
| from the training data, which was what - idle conversations on
| Reddit and other similar content pilfered on the internet? The
| bias is doing _some_ harm in places like that, but we 're now
| using that to make real decisions. That's... worse.
| walt_grata wrote:
| I think the point is that bias happens in all human behavior,
| but with AI it's more visible than in the general population.
| Which I'd say is a positive, but I don't believe if it
| offsets the downsides.
| doe_eyes wrote:
| But that's not a given. We conduct ourselves differently at
| work and in private life. Further, workplace processes are
| often designed to minimize bias. And here, we have a system
| that is trained on content that's two rungs above 4chan,
| and then coerced not to say racist things via RLHF. I don't
| think it's comparable at all.
| tensor wrote:
| No, typically these sorts of models would not be trained on
| reddit, they would be trained on historical data that
| insurance companies and lending companies have. For example,
| a famous case is where they used AI to help decide if people
| will reoffend [1]. The bias here was already embedded in
| prior historical data. E.g. there is a level of systemic
| racism or bias built-in to the entire prison system.
|
| While HN is obsessed with LLMs, AI regulation targets more
| than just those systems. And yes, AI and machine learning
| were pervasive and used in a variety of useful settings long
| before these toy chat systems came about.
|
| Insurance and lending companies already have complex
| algorithms and formula they use to determine risk scores.
| Adding components of these systems that are learned from data
| shouldn't change the overall oversight mechanisms required of
| them in my opinion.
|
| [1] https://www.technologyreview.com/2019/01/21/137783/algori
| thm...
| doe_eyes wrote:
| People are obsessed with LLMs because they can be applied
| to unstructured data and produce human-like outputs, so
| they are applicable to vastly more processes with vastly
| less oversight.
|
| The kinds of "AI" you're describing have been with us for
| decades, but LLMs and their ilk are a more consequential
| development. And if we're passing laws today, that's what
| they will be regulating for the most part.
| tensor wrote:
| Which is what I'm say is wrong. If the oversight on
| insurance and other companies is lacking, it needs to be
| improved across the board not just with lip service to
| the popular technology of the day. The bias inherent is
| the exist risk scoring systems is absolutely equally if
| not more consequential than LLMs.
|
| Most of these regulations can replace "AI" with
| "technology, mathematical model, or human processes" and
| they will be 1000x better laws.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| > _Why isn 't it illegal to use traditional algorithms that
| have bias? Why aren't there regulations ensuring bias testing
| when humans themselves make decisions?_
|
| It is and there are, but rule-based systems and humans have
| traditionally been more limited.
|
| You'd better bet that health insurers continually get audited
| in terms of claim pay rates and correctness.
|
| The major difference is that AI systems can be pre-audited at
| minimal cost. In contrast, human auditing traditionally
| consumes billable processing time and so is done post-hoc on
| production results.
|
| Honestly, I'm excited about these types of regulations. I think
| systems with more transparency, testability, and accountability
| are going to be better for society as a whole.
|
| If it took "cost savings" + "scary AI" to get us there
| (digitization/automation and proactive outcome auditing
| respectively), that is what it is.
| w-ll wrote:
| I thought Tennessee was first due to their massive music
| industry.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2024/03/22/1240114159/tennessee-protect-...
| jqpabc123 wrote:
| People make bad decisions too --- but they rarely do so alone.
| Try hiring someone in an established company without multiple
| levels of review.
|
| The problem with AI is that we know these models are flawed but
| they are being implemented anyway in an effort to save money.
|
| If you have to manually review all AI results, the cost savings
| start to evaporate. Particularly if it leads to lawsuits.
|
| Imagine trying to explain in court how/why AI decided to fire
| someone.
|
| The real culprit here is greed.
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