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Comment by iliketosleep | Hacker News Reader

If this is not criminal negligence then I don't know what is. I bet nobody goes to prison for it though. It's funny how individuals can go to prison for rather trivial offences that do not harm others. Yet corporations can get away with what basically equates to manslaughter.

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Indeed. Corporations are called fictitious entities for a reason, they don't really exist. Send all the people home, and ask a corporation to turn on a lamp, or sell a widget; it can't. We allow their creation because it creates a great deal of convenience to the humans in the business. However, they're still fictitious and the state has the right to dissolve a corporation in some circumstances. Despite this, we seem to have a culture where corporations are given MORE rights than people. We've literally created imaginary monsters that threaten the life and freedom of real human beings.

"Rip open the diseased heart of a corporation and what spills out?”

“People.”

(From the second book in the altered carbon series)

Very good books, all three of them.

And we haven't even put AI in charge of them yet. Wait until those completely soulless statistics-only driven entities start running them while having more than human rights.

Optimisation algorithms have no hidden agenda and are predictable. Given we agree on the variable they optimise for and can check the source code, what's not to like?

The people setting the parameters may have hidden agendas. Or even not so hidden ones, like "make me rich at anybody's cost".

I think a much more likely cause would be biased data.

If you trained against a dataset of all police stops in my state (CT) to predict which vehicles should be stopped to maximize drug finds you'd include multiple large departments that have been under federal investigation for racial discrimination (and were found guilty).

I don't think the hidden agenda would be intentional, but there would be a hidden agenda.

Those givens are far from trivial, and getting them wrong is dangerous. You may as well say "Given we can perfectly predict the market, it's possible to make a lot of money"

First of all, for any non-trivial real-world problem (like e.g. doing a simplest of tasks while respecting human moral values), we do not, generally, agree on the variable (function, actually) being optimized. Nor can we even define it with sufficient amount of precision. This is the core of what's known as "Friendly AI" problem (also known as "AI control problem").

Secondly, optimization algorithms "have no hidden agenta and are predictable" only insofar as you're able to comprehend their implementation. Which, for anything more trivial than blinking an LED, you're most likely not. This is the core of what's known as "programs have bugs" problem in software engineering, and also of the "bugs are exploitable" and "programs can have hidden backdoors" problems in software security engineering.

> Given we ... can check the source code

That's not a given.

A cancerous tumor or virus is essentially an organically programmed optimization algorithm. I can think of a few things not to like about them.

This is probably the most inaccurate statement I've ever read.

Here are just some of the assumptions it is making that are flawed beyond repair:

- Algorithms don't have unexpected behaviour.

- Computer programs operating in real time are predictable

- We can agree on what to optimise for

- Checking the source code is always possible

- Checking the source code allows you to understand a program

All those objections I agree with. Yet, this still sounds better than electing people from time to time on the basis of unverifiable promises, with no control on what is actually done unless you can throw a lot of money in lobbying.

The algorithm, the problem it is applied to, the variables to consider and to optimize, the variables excluded from consideration, and the dats sources used are all choices made by someone with some agenda. And they don't have to agree with you on their choices.

We kind of have in small ways. Look at high frequency trading algorithms, you have companies spending millions of dollars to shave off a millisecond of network latency in order to maximize HFT algos. Then we see things like the Flash Crash of 2010...

I like your lamp test, too bad it wasn't part of the Citizens United ruling that made corporations legally people - people with more money than most individuals who can influence legislation more than most individuals.

Corporations have always been people. If corporations weren’t people, you wouldn’t be able to sue them.

Seems like a reasonable punishment for such criminal negligence for a corporation would be revocation of the patents protecting their monopoly. A corporation does not deserve a government-sanctioned monopoly if it is negligent in how it uses that monopoly power.

I would love it if that ever happened to any company. Sadly,

What I don't understand about this situation, is that the EpiPen is not covered by patents. It's been off patent for a long time. Why aren't other companies stepping in and making a competing product? If it's off patent and they can make the same product for cheaper, then the branded EpiPen sales will decline which will force them to lower their price.

There is definitely a market failure here, but it's not clear why.

Patent is only the first part of inertia to overcome here. You need insurance companies to agree to refund your alternative. You need to get doctors to prescribe it. You need to get pharmacies to stock it. You need to get patients to want them. Only one of these groups has any incentive to help you.

This is why some countries have enacted laws to help with that.

And, laws that don't force the use of brand name drugs.

https://www.statnews.com/2016/08/25/mylan-antitrust-epipen-s...

http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/08/29/reverse-voxsplaining-dr...

"They keep trying, and the FDA keeps refusing to approve them for human use."

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/09/01/49223579...

The specific mechanism Mylan markets is covered by a patent. Some adjustment to the way the needle cap operates.

Of course that patent doesn't prevent other epinephrine autoinjectors from coming to market (and Adrenaclick is available in the US, including a couple generics).

My take is that the FDA should have some authority to deny market approval for such small improvements if the company refuses to license them to generic manufacturers. The hard part is deciding what constitutes a small improvement.

Not the market. The FDA.

If people start to pay attention to the process and the corruption surrounding EpiPen, will it blow the lid off the entire FDA system?

> Seems like a reasonable punishment for such criminal negligence for a corporation would be ...

But corporations don't make decisions, those are made by the actual human beings that work for those corporations. Those human beings belong in prison.

With the price hike story though, the public will push for some heads to fall, and prosecution should have the jury on their side for this. I'm willing to take the bet that someone's going to jail for this.

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