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Comment by bayesianhorse | Hacker News Reader

This is not a problem of "algorithms" but rather of stupid policies. A programming manager at Google would have been fired if he had put such obvious errors in PageRank (or whatever they call it these days).

Algorithms and data can only improve effectiveness of these systems and agencies. However, their use has been combined with drastic funding cuts. These cuts and the resulting malfunctions aren't exactly a fundamental problem with data science.

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But bureaucracy is filled with stupid policies, and was filled for centuries. Stupid policies have to expected, frankly. But unlike commercial companies, people don't have anyone else to turn to. That's why, in a special case of a government machine — which is (1) without alternative and (2) error prone — the human sanity check should always be present.

The difference is that when a person is involved, you can apply pressure via representative, the press, etc. Bureaucracy has been full of "jobsworths" ("Sorry, guv, more than me jobs worth.") forever.

In reality, the real issue is total underfunding of these services for those who need them. People aren't switching to computers for these things because they think it's better (obviously, the policing one is the exception), they are switching because they don't have a choice to keep up with the workload.

Not really. There always seems to be some "friendly fire" whenever Google releases new algorithm changes meant to combat abuse. I doubt anyone is ever fired over it, or else they would probably be constantly firing people.

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