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Comment by dgellow | Hacker News Reader

> Research commissioned by the workplace umpire shows its cases have recently grown by 40 per cent, in part due to litigants using AI.

A recent thought I had about the AI rollout: it’s such a massively unbalanced bet. We are experiencing right now the negative aspects of AI, we are paying for that. For a chance that maybe some hypothetical, sci-fi-like technology exists in the future. So we know we will always suffer the losing end of the bet, and we have no idea if we will win, or even how that would look like to win.

In this example we see how the commission is under stress, something we see across the board, and the benefits so far have been that software and emails are written faster, and maybe something more will come at some point in the future (that we also know will have its own set of externalities).

It’s insane that such a small group can decide to play that gamble for the rest of society, worldwide

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The way I see it, LLMs are a direct attack on friction designed into human processes.

- Filing a lawsuit

- Applying to a university

- Tailoring a cover-letter for a job application

- Writing to a local government body to complain about street lighting

- Writing a homework essay as part of a class at school

Things like this have always, supposedly, been available to everyone - but preparing those documents and jumping through the necessary hoops has been hard enough that the flow of applications has stayed at a manageable level.

LLMs destroy that balance. The volume of applications goes through the roof. Now we have to redesign all of these decades- or centuries- old human processes, without any warning that we would have to do so.

This is an interesting thought, but perhaps AI is an extension of the general case of the internet itself. Among the examples that come to mind:

1. buying/scalping concert/event tickets: in the past it would have been unrealistic to scalp tickets for faraway venues

2. fraud/identity verification: now anyone can apply for an account in your name anywhere as long as they enough personal information about you without a human confirming you are who you say

3. public shaming/harassment: any moment of yours in public now has a non-zero risk of going public throughout the world

4. spread of conspiracy theories/propaganda: now all the village idiots can find each other

It’s not just the volume, but also the quality of that increased volume, I don’t have the data but would bet it’s actually very time consuming to review that 40% increase (because the content will look plausible and confident but will likely have mistake). I cannot imagine being the poor folks having to process all that

We recently recruited two developers. Our recruitment process involves asking three questions before the interview stage. Almost every single answer was written by AI - they all followed the same format and presented the answer in the same way, customised to the applicant.

It was mind-numbing. The non-ai applicants were obvious and really stood out as the best answers.

Though that friction is paid in human lifespan, unlike a deposit fee that cannot be recovered if your request is found have merit. Additionally the other side often is not incentivized to minimize the friction. So ideally these processes would be less wasteful in the first place, it's just unfortunate that this is forced by unilateral action instead of being arrived at cooperatively.

This, after decades of phone trees, mail-in rebates, specialist pre-approvals, and other processes specifically designed to create friction for typical people when interacting with large companies and organizations.

I have no moral judgment here, but it seems like a classic pendulum. Part of the demand for AI is coming because our systems are intentionally friction-filled.

Make it easier to make claims against employers and don't reqiure people to pay for a lawyer. AI help is not going away and criminalizing it is nothing more than making sure only rich people get to use AI against others.

Look at how AI can hack other companies and cause harm, but no one gets arrested. One of the reddit founders was forced into suicide over a bogus conviction over distilling jstor and now every AI when wielded by a tech company gets to do the same thing without their CEOs going to jail for 20 years.

Stop supporting things that give all the power to a handful of CEOs.

It’s already easy to commence a claim against an employer in the FWC.

The system is specifically designed for self represented litigants to be able to navigate the process and get a just outcome without being ruined by legal costs if they lose. It generally works well.

That’s not the same thing as allowing frivolous and vexatious claims to get up, as the applicant attempted here.

THEY are rolling it out in a way that WE experience negative aspects of it. And all that for their hope THEY get to become all powerful rulers over us.

It is unbalanced, but you are hiding the unbalance behind "we". Some are rolling it out in a way to cause maximal damage to others now. The "others" are experiencing negative aspects.

Sure, I consider that implied in any AI discussion, we all know people at the top are (mostly) insulated from negative consequences

Yeah but I think it is worth not hiding in the language. Because otherwise it ends up as the situation where the ones doing it are not blamed and everyone else is.

You see that in politics a lot - the "politicians" in general or the institutions are blamed for acts sone ovewhelmingly mostly one party.

In the long term, it enables bad actors. And back in AI diacussion, those bad actors are really trying to frame themselves as saviors ... from danger they are creating by own hype.

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