Texas Is Exploring Role of AI in Government 66
When a deluge of jobless claims overwhelmed Texas in 2020, the workforce agency deployed AI chatbot "Larry" to field unemployment questions. Larry answered over 21 million queries before being upgraded, but its adoption sparked fears over loss of control. Texas last year established an advisory council to inventory current state AI usages like Larry and consider safeguards against unintended consequences like bias. More than one-third of agencies already use some form of AI, including for job matching, translations and security. From a report: The workforce commission also has an AI tool for job seekers that provides customized recommendations of job openings. Various agencies are using AI for translating languages into English and call center tools such as speech-to-text. AI is also used to enhance cybersecurity and fraud detection.
Automation is also used for time-consuming work in order to "increase work output and efficiency," according to a statement from the Department of Information Resources. One example of this could be tracking budget expenses and invoices. In 2020, DIR launched an AI Center for Excellence aimed at helping state agencies implement more AI technology. Participation in DIR's center is voluntary, and each agency typically has its own technology team, so the extent of automation and AI deployment at state agencies is not closely tracked.
Right now, Texas state agencies have to verify that the technology they use meets safety requirements set by state law, but there are no specific disclosure requirements on the types of technology or how they are used. HB 2060 will require each agency to provide that information to the AI advisory council by July 2024.
Automation is also used for time-consuming work in order to "increase work output and efficiency," according to a statement from the Department of Information Resources. One example of this could be tracking budget expenses and invoices. In 2020, DIR launched an AI Center for Excellence aimed at helping state agencies implement more AI technology. Participation in DIR's center is voluntary, and each agency typically has its own technology team, so the extent of automation and AI deployment at state agencies is not closely tracked.
Right now, Texas state agencies have to verify that the technology they use meets safety requirements set by state law, but there are no specific disclosure requirements on the types of technology or how they are used. HB 2060 will require each agency to provide that information to the AI advisory council by July 2024.
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And by "do whatever they want" you mean the verification and processing of a multitude of applications such as permitting for oil lines, safety inspections, and driver's licenses, to name just a few. Or the inspections themselves. Or the surveying. Or the road repair (certain states excluded). While every organization has that person who never seems to do
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They generally do not do "what they want". That's the deep state myth. Instead what they do is follow the law, regardless of being told to break it, and they do what the policy is when the policy gets written down and into the documents. I know that pisses off people who think that the president or governor can just snap a finger and do what they want immediately.
But think about it, if all those people who wanted Trump to have absolute control over ever facet of government, would they be so happy if Biden
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Re:could be interesting (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:could be interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
I see, so you want automated government, with no democracy. And you HATE pensions, and salaries with living wages, you want them all out on the street, competing for your personal job, and doing it till they die.
Have I missed anything, Randist?
Tinpot dictators (Score:1)
I see, so you want automated government, with no democracy. And you HATE pensions, and salaries with living wages, you want them all out on the street, competing for your personal job, and doing it till they die.
Have I missed anything, Randist?
I believe Rand was pro democracy. I seem to recall that she was against totalitarianism in general and communism specifically.
But then, I've only read her work and not studied it under the lens of today's liberal college curriculum.
Automating the mundane aspects of government seems like something she would approve of, it takes away the ability of small tinpot dictators to arbitrarily exert control over other people for no good reason. Lots of her work revolved around small minded bureaucrats exerting arbitr
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A system where, for example the justice department, is completely predictable and not prejudiced by human beliefs would be a much better system.
This sounds nice but I am fairly sure that there have been more than a couple dystopian stories written about a benevolent AI ruling society ("Star Trek: The Return of the Archons" as an example) and things going wrong.
A justice system is a very "human" thing with a lot of context and opinions, it almost by necessity cannot be automated. Hoever a lot of processes around it will be, there's a lot of paperwork and research lawyers have to do.
Besides anything clos to be able to do this presumes not just AI bu
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The stories about AI going wrong are all fictions. They aren't even historical fictions. They are pure fiction. There isn't any fact behind them at all.
We don't actually know if an AI government will go horribly wrong, because we have precisely zero experience with such a thing.
Of course, we can say with confidence that things could go wrong. We are well aware of the realities of code bugs, of bad training data, and now we are also aware of the realities of AI hallucination. So we can keep iterating on
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Yeah to be clear, I am not opposed to the idea i just don't think with something like a justice system in particular that it would be feasible without the level of an actual AGI. Justice in particular would be in my opinion the most ill-suited of government functions to AI. There could be a philosophical case to made that justice for humans should be meted out by humans.
For things like administration or more mundane beau acratic tasks or economics? There's definite potential. There is the idea that a suf
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The justice system is also supposed to be independent of party or president. The major kerfuffle over it today is because Trump is butthurt that the justice department would not bow down and follow his orders, and why he pushed out two attorney generals. That's what you want a justice department to do, you don't want them to be an enforcement arm of temporary personalities.
Schoolhouse Rock (Score:1)
You weren't paying attention when you were a kid, were you.
The Justice Department is part of the Executive Branch and the head of that is the President
https://youtu.be/-EISWIY9bG8 [youtu.be]
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Yes, but as a kid there was this whole thing called "Nixon". It was a big scandal when Nixon tried to prevent himself from being investigated. Because presidents are not above the law. So while I was a kid there were several reforms made, including the Ethics in Government Act, and later executive actions by Ford(!) and Carter to make the justice department more independent of the president. And since 1800s, there have been special counsels, in the states and federal government, in order to investigate w
Re:Tinpot dictators (Score:4, Informative)
As we've seen all too well lately; the US loves dictators... ahem, sorry "strong leaders."
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Her books are absolute drivel
Her first book, We The Living, set in the Soviet Union and describing things she saw while growing up there is an absolute masterpiece.
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First, Ayn Rand should not be treated as a high authority of governments who must be followed to the letter. She was merely an author of fiction. Even her disciple Greenspan moved away from her strict ideology when pragmatism caught up to him.
Also, Rand collected Social Security checks. Her rationale was that she paid into it and therefore she should get back her entitlement when she turned 65. For the same rationale, you cannot just cancel Social Security now, too many people have paid into it. Social
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Why would the automation of government workers put an end to democracy? An AI-controlled government is perfectly capable of putting issues to vote, tallying the votes as humans cast them, etc.
The money saved from government worker salaries would be available for other purposes that could offset the increased labor pool. But it won't matter. If we actually achieve AI that is capable of running a government better than we are, so many OTHER jobs will also be done by AI instead that our entire concept of a
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Why would the automation of government workers put an end to democracy? An AI-controlled government is perfectly capable of putting issues to vote, tallying the votes as humans cast them, etc.
Because AI decisions will be opaque leading to loss of due process. The government and corporations already take advantage of this deliberately and it has ruined lives. Read up on the British Post Office scandal for an example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Go onto automated customer service lines with a special need not covered by the automation or needing to fix an error and see how replacing people with mindless AI will work for you.
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The first line of phone support are always drones, they cannot solve your problem. They can only tell you to try turning it off and back on again, or pointing you to the website you already visited that tells you how to change your password, etc. It's a half hour or more of patience before you get to someone who can actually help.
Even a phone number recently for "call 800-xxx-xxxx if you suspect fraud" was just a voice recording pointing back to an unhelpful website, that also says to call that number.
An
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Bit by bit, AI will creep its way into government. And not just government, everything that involves managing large numbers (things like organizing sporting events, setting interest rates, investing in infrastructure, and so on).
It won't happen all at once. We will phase it in here and there, in places where it seems innocuous and yet reliable. We won't realize how much we are doing this. And we won't notice how interconnected these seemingly-independent AI models are becoming.
By the time the AI takeove
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It won't touch government spending much. The amounts that gov. spends on gov. workers is decimal dust compared to what it spends in programs that fund schools, health programs, inspectors that determine whether Joe's Beanery and Advanced Chip Making are fouling the rivers, etc. You have no insight into how government works.
Ken Paxton AI can prevent further abortions (Score:4, Insightful)
Now the Ken Paxton AI can prevent further medically necessary abortions and endanger the lives of many more mothers to be.
I fully expect Texas to take Missouri's example and track the menstrual cycle of not just girls in the foster care system, but the entire state of Texas.
Re:Ken Paxton AI can prevent further abortions (Score:4, Interesting)
Because what else would those small government, get-out-of-my-business, anti-mandate Republicans do?
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Do Republicans still claim to be for small government? I haven't heard any such stuff in a long time out of them. I think they want just as much government as the Democrats and just like the Democrats, they want to be the ones calling the shots.
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Depends on what the government needs to do.
For Republicans, it's all about small government for business, big government for social stuff that happens in the bedroom and behind closed doors.
For Democrats, it's about small government for stuff that happens in private,
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I think if you ask Paxton nicely, he'll promote a bill making women's periods illegal. He's not the brightest bulb on the tree.
Great news (Score:3)
I'm just kidding. The AI owners will have private militaries that will put down any rebellions.
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AI's power source will need to be heavily fortified. Running AI needs a non-trivial amount of continuous power.
Oh Texas... (Score:2, Funny)
1. No sidewalks
2. Drunk driving epidemic (watched someone speeding hit a deer)
3. Power grid issues
Personally, I do not think the folks who cannot band together to upgrade their infra will make any meaningful movement forward with AI.
Who knows, there's Texas Instruments. Huge fan of their calculators.
Maybe there's hope.
Re: Oh Texas... (Score:2)
Re:Oh Texas... (Score:5, Informative)
I live in San Antonio. We have sidewalks and unless you happened to visit during that winter storm several years ago, I am unsure of what power grid issues you are reffering to.
Drunk driving... maybe you have a point. I havn't compared to other states but since you have the other two points so badly incorrect, I am not bothering checking that one for you.
doomed (Score:2)
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This is doomed to be shelved as soon as anything with a scrap of any kind of intelligence tells them that they should be less authoritarian.
So, current AI won't stop it?
Do I have this right? (Score:1)
There were so many people laid off, that the extremist government of Texas didn't even consider HIRING some of them to handle all the calls, just use AI to keep people unemployed.
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There were so many people laid off, that the extremist government of Texas didn't even consider HIRING some of them to handle all the calls, just use AI to keep people unemployed.
No you don't have this right. The jobless claims in 2020 were due to the covid shutdowns. California and most other states had the exact same problem where the unemployeement offices where overwhelmed. (And I can attest it did suck as someone trying to get those benifits during that timeframe. It sucked enough that I researched and kept getting results for states that were not Texas having the same issues.)
Unemployment? (Score:3)
Isn't that dirty socialism? Why does Texas support the socialist agenda?
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Once again you are showing what you incorrectly think conservatives think.
Re:Unemployment? (Score:4, Insightful)
No, he has it precisely correct. Republicans are mean-spirited. One medical issue can knock you out of job and take out all your finances. The R's just look on and not so sadly shake their heads say, "isn't it a shame, someone (but not us) should do something". And if the person manages to recover and land another job, they declare it fucking miracle and thank God for it.
Re:Unemployment? (Score:4, Informative)
They think "I'm going to keep them in my thoughts and prayers."
That's it.
Nothing else.
I cordially invite you to provide evidence to the contrary.
Re: Unemployment? (Score:2)
It's pretty clear what conservatives think about unemployment benefits. They're too popular to cut so they play games reducing them, ending temporary programs early, and blocking renewal of existing programs. Same petty games they play with everything else they dislike but are on the other side of public opinion on. Don't be coy, if I got it wrong you tell me where conservatives stand on unemployment benefits.
https://www.aei.org/articles/e... [aei.org]
https://www.businessinsider.co... [businessinsider.com]
https://www.politico.com/story... [politico.com]
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It's tricky to figure out what they think, because there are conservatives, neo-conservatives, whatever this MAGA thing is, and everything in between. They're all different. Just when you think you understand them they throw in a monkey wrench and change. Ie, they're for small government, except when they're in charge in their state and it's big government, or they want to reduce the deficit except that they raise it when they get the majority. The modern crowd has absolutely no resemblance to Reagan, Go
Re: Unemployment? (Score:2)
https://www.dallasnews.com/new... [dallasnews.com]
This’ll be easy (Score:2)
20. Approve and Process application
30. Ship AR15
40. Ship extra-long magazine and plenty of armor piercing ammo
50. Email directions to nearest grade school
60. Arrival of asylum applicant?
70. Separate children and store in cage.
70. Deny and Process application
80. Ship package to (Mexico) OR (Chicago) OR (NYC)
90. Post victory dance on X
100. Woman carrying a dead/doomed fetus about to go septic?
110. Deny in-state medical care
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Don't forget this is a Christian nation, get out there and welcome those immigrantsinto your home and thank Jesus for giving you the opportunity show you aren't just a ignorant cuss who would rather see people screwed than taken care of.
ERR (Score:2)
There would seem to be two line 70 's in that listing.
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"Artificial" is key here (Score:2)
Given all the completely irrational decisions made by each and every government all around the world, the term "artificial intelligence" fits 8n very well.
Can't be any worse (Score:3)
than the existing government.
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They can automate their corruption and make it possibly more hidden ; although, now they hide behind perceived incompetence and religiosity. Perhaps the AI needs to convince people it's Christian before they blindly hand over control? It'll be easy for AI to learn to blame human errors for incompetence.
It's a shame that AI can't lend some intelligence to Texas voters...
No problem with it as long as (Score:2)
... as long as you can get to an actual person who can accurately answer your slightly unusual question. I strongly suspect this "AI chatbot" Texas is using is just a decision tree that tries to match your query against a list of known answers. If the question or issue or complaint isn't in the list it will fail. Sometimes they fail gracefully over to a person, but a lot of times they just tell you to go to a website.
Re: No problem with it as long as (Score:2)
Hallucinating a bunch of crazy shit. (Score:2)
Sounds like an improvement on their legislative, judicial and executive branches' regular performance.
Good news! (Score:1)
A Rick Scarborough chatbot (Score:2)
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Ha, no. Get a ChatBot to summarize the Bible and it will piss off all the religious leaders (except maybe the quakers and unitarians).
Meh... (Score:1)
Finally! (Score:2)