Comment by djoldman | Hacker News Reader

Comment by djoldman | Hacker News Reader

> Imagine applying for a job, only to find out that an algorithm powered by artificial intelligence (AI) rejected your resume before a human even saw it. Or imagine visiting a doctor where treatment options are chosen by a machine you can’t question.

I wonder when/if the opposite will be as much of an article hook:

"Imagine applying for a job, only to find out that a human rejected your resume before an algorithm powered by artificial intelligence (AI) even saw it. Or imagine visiting a doctor where treatment options are chosen by a human you can’t question."

The implicit assumption is that it's preferred that humans do the work. In the first case, probably most would assume an AI is... ruthless? biased? Both exist for humans too. Not that the current state of AI resume processing is necessarily "good".

In the second, I don't understand as no competent licensed doctor chooses the treatment options (absent an emergency); they presumably know the only reasonable options, discuss them with the patient, answer questions, and the patient chooses.

Humans can be held accountable. Machines can't. AI dilutes responsibility.

AI didn't bring anything new to the table, this is a human problem. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0YGZPycMEU

GenAI absolutely brings something new to the table! These models should be perceived as human-like intelligence when it's time to bring value to shareholders, but are designed to provide just enough non-determinism to avoid responsibilities.

All problems are human and nothing will ever change that. Just imagine the effects anyone is facing when being affected by something like the British Post Office scandal[0], only this time it's impossible to comprehend any faults in the software system.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal

How fortunate that AIs are tools operated by humans, and can't cause worse responsibility issues than when a human employee is required to blindly follow a canned procedure.

I can't tell if this is sarcasm...

GenAI interfaces are rolled out as chat products to end users, they just evaporate this last responsibility that remains on any human employee. This responsiblity shift from employee to end user is made on purpose, "worse responsibility issues" are real and well designed to be on the customer side.

What do you mean held accountable? No HR human is going to jail for overlooking your resume.

If you mean that a human can be fired when they overlook a resume, an AI system can be be similarly rejected and no longer used.

You cannot punish an AI - it has no sense of ethics or morality, nor a conscience. An AI cannot be made to feel shame. You cannot punish an AI for transgressing.

A person can be held responsible, even when it's indirect responsibility, in a way that serves as a warning to others, to avoid certain behaviors.

It just seems wrong to allow machines to make decisions affecting humans, when those machines are incapable of experiencing the the world as a human being does. And yet, people are eager to offload the responsibility onto machines, to escape responsibility themselves.

Humans making the decision to use AI need to be responsible for what the AI does, in the way that the owner/operator of a car is responsible for what the car does.

"Humans" is the problem. There's one driver in a car, but likely far more than one human deciding to use AI, so who takes responsibility for it?

If there's more than one possiblity, then their boss. Or the boss's boss. Or the CEO, ultimately.

Humans can be held accountable when they discriminate against groups of people. Try holding a company accountable for that when they're using an AI system.

You haven’t explained how it’s different

I don't think humans actually can be held accountable for discrimination in resume screening. I've only ever heard of cases where companies were held accountable for discriminatory tests or algorithms.

No, not really. If a single HR person is fired, there are likely others to pick up the slack. And others will likely learn something from the firing, and adjust their behavior accordingly if needed.

On the other hand, "firing" an AI from AI-based HR department will likely paralyze it completely, so it's closer to "let's fire every single low-level HR person at once" - something very unlikely to occur.

The same goes with all other applications too: firing a single nurse is relativel easy. Replacing AI system with a new one is a major project which likely takes dozens of people and millions of dollars.

If the system is built externally by vendor, you can change the vendor and it would create pressure on the vendor ecosystem to not create bad system.

If it is built internally you need people to be responsible to create reliable tests and someone to lead the project. In a way it's not very different than if your external system is bad or crashing. You need accountability in the team. Google can't fire "Google Ads" but doesn't mean they can't expect Google Ads to reliably give them money and people to be responsible for maintaining quality.

At least in the work setting, employers are generally liable for stuff in the workplace:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicarious_liability

[flagged]

Companies are doing it right now. Self-driving cars, AI, you name it.

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> In the second, I don't understand as no competent licensed doctor chooses the treatment options (absent an emergency); they presumably know the only reasonable options, discuss them with the patient, answer questions, and the patient chooses.

I wish that were the case, but in my experience it is not. Every time I've seen a doctor, they offered only one medication, unless I requested a different one.

>they offered only one medication

I've had a few doctors offer me alternatives and talk through the options, which I'll agree is rare. It sure has been nice when it happened. One time I did push back on one of the doctor's recommendations: I was with my mom and the doctor said he was going to prescribe some medication. I said "I presume you're already aware of this but she's been on that before and reacted poorly to it and we took her off it because of that. The doctor was NOT aware of that and prescribed something else. I sure was glad to be there and be able to catch that.

There's a few possible reasons this can happen.

First is that the side effect profile of one option is much better known or tolerated, so the doctor will default to it.

Second is that the doctor knows the insurance company / government plan will require attempting to treat a condition with a standard cheaper treatment before they will pay for the newer, more expensive option.

There's always the third case where the doctor is overworked, lazy or prideful and doesn't consider the patient may have some input on which treatment they would like, since they didn't go to medical school and what would they know anyway?

>Or imagine visiting a doctor where treatment options are chosen by a human you can’t question

That really struck a chord with me. I've been struggling with chronic sinusitis, without really much success. I had ChatGPT o3 do a deep research on my specific symptoms and test results, including a negative allergy (on my shoulder) test but that the doctor observed allergic reactions in my sinuses.

ChatGPT seemed to do a great job, and in particular came up with a pointer to an NIH reference that showed 25% of patients in a study showed "local rhinitis" (isolated allergic reactions) in their sinuses that didn't show elsewhere. I asked my ENT if I could be experiencing a local reaction in my sinuses that didn't show up in my shoulder, and he completely dismissed that idea with "That's not how allergies work, they cause a reaction all over the body."

However, I will say that I've been taking one of the second gen allergy meds for the last 2 weeks and the sinus issues have been resolved and staying resolved, but I do need another couple months to really have a good data point.

The funny thing is that this Dr is a evening programmer, and every time I see him we are talking about how amazing the different LLMs are for programming. He also really seems to keep up with new ENT tech, he was telling me all about a new "KPAP" algorithm that they are working on FDA approval for and apparently is much less annoying to use than CPAP. But he didn't have any interest in looking at the at the NIH reference.

> I do need another couple months to really have a good data point.

You need another couple months to really have a good anecdote.

I think whether I'm cured or not only slightly minimizes the story of a physician who discounted something that seemingly impacts 25% of patients... It's also interesting to me that ChatGPT came up with research supporting an answer to my primary question, but the Dr. did not.

The point being that there's a lot that the LLMs can do in concert with physicians, discounting either one is not useful or interesting.

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