Ottawa Law Enforcement and Reasonable Time for Mobile Phone Access
February 5, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
The challenge of mobile phones is that it takes time to access the data if a password is not available to law enforcement. As more mobiles are obtained from alleged bad actors, the more time is required. The backlog can be onerous because many law enforcement agencies have a limited number of cyber investigators and a specific number of forensic software licenses or specialized machines necessary to extract data from a mobile device.
Time is not on their side. The Ottawa Citizen reports, “Police Must Return Phones After 175 Million Passcode Guesses, Judge Says.” It is not actually about the number of guesses, but about how long investigators can retain suspects’ property. After several months trying to crack the passwords on one suspect’s phone, Ottawa police asked Ontario Superior Court Justice Ian Carter to allow them to retain the device for another two years. But even that was a long shot. Writer Andrew Duffy tells us:
“Ontario Superior Court Justice Ian Carter heard that police investigators tried about 175 million passcodes in an effort to break into the phones during the past year. The problem, the judge was told, is that more than 44 nonillion potential passcodes exist for each phone. To be more precise, the judge said, there are 44,012,666,865,176,569,775,543,212,890,625 potential alpha-numeric passcodes for each phone. It means, Carter said, that even though 175 million passcodes were attempted, those efforts represented ‘an infinitesimal number’ of potential answers.”
The article describes the brute-force dictionary attacks police had used so far and defines the term leetspeak for curious readers. Though investigators recently added the password-generating tool Mentalist to their arsenal, the judge determined their chances of breaking into the phone were too slim. We learn:
“In his ruling, Carter said the court had to balance the property rights of an individual against the state’s legitimate interest in preserving evidence in an investigation. The phones, he said, have no evidentiary value unless the police succeed in finding the right passcodes. ‘While it is certainly possible that they may find the needle in the next two years, the odds are so incredibly low as to be virtually non-existent,’ the judge wrote. ‘A detention order for a further six months, two years, or even a decade will not alter the calculus in any meaningful way.’ He denied the Crown’s application to retain the phones and ordered them returned or destroyed.”
The judge suggested investigators instead formally request more data from Google, which supplied the information that led to the warrants in the first place. Good idea, but techno feudal outfits are often not set up to handle a large number of often-complex requests. The result is that law enforcement is expected to perform certain tasks while administrative procedures and business processes slam on the brakes. One would hope that information about the reality of accessing mobile devices were better understood and supported.
Cynthia Murrell, February 5, 2024
An International AI Panel: Notice Anything Unusual?
February 2, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
An expert international advisory panel has been formed. The ooomph behind the group is the UK’s prime minister. The Evening Standard newspaper described the panel this way:
The first-of-its-kind scientific report on AI will be used to shape international discussions around the technology.
Australia. Professor Bronwyn Fox, Chief Scientist, The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO)
Brazil. André Carlos Ponce de Leon Ferreira de Carvalho, Professor, Institute of Mathematics and Computer Sciences, University of São Paulo
Canada. Doctor Mona Nemer, Chief Science Advisor of Canada
Canada. Professor Yoshua Bengio, considered one of the “godfathers of AI”.
Chile. Raquel Pezoa Rivera, Academic, Federico Santa María Technical University
China. Doctor Yi Zeng, Professor, Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences
EU. Juha Heikkilä, Adviser for Artificial Intelligence, DG Connect
France. Guillame Avrin, National Coordinator for AI, General Directorate of Enterprises
Germany. Professor Antonio Krüger, CEO, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence.
India. Professor Balaraman Ravindran, Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras
Indonesia. Professor Hammam Riza, President, KORIKA
Ireland. Doctor. Ciarán Seoighe, Deputy Director General, Science Foundation Ireland
Israel. Doctor Ziv Katzir, Head of the National Plan for Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure, Israel Innovation Authority
Italy. Doctor Andrea Monti,Professor of Digital Law, University of Chieti-Pescara.
Japan. Doctor Hiroaki Kitano, CTO, Sony Group Corporation
Kenya. Awaiting nomination
Mexico. Doctor José Ramón López Portillo, Chairman and Co-founder, Q Element
Netherlands. Professor Haroon Sheikh, Senior Research Fellow, Netherlands’ Scientific Council for Government Policy
New Zealand. Doctor Gill Jolly, Chief Science Advisor, Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment
Nigeria. Doctor Olubunmi Ajala, Technical Adviser to the Honorable Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy,
Philippines. Awaiting nominationRepublic of Korea. Professor Lee Kyoung Mu, Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Seoul National University
Rwanda. Crystal Rugege, Managing Director, National Center for AI and Innovation Policy
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Doctor Fahad Albalawi, Senior AI Advisor, Saudi Authority for Data and Artificial Intelligence
Singapore. Denise Wong, Assistant Chief Executive, Data Innovation and Protection Group, Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA)
Spain. Nuria Oliver, Vice-President, European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLISS)
Switzerland. Doctor. Christian Busch, Deputy Head, Innovation, Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research
Turkey. Ahmet Halit Hatip, Director General of European Union and Foreign Relations, Turkish Ministry of Industry and Technology
UAE. Marwan Alserkal, Senior Research Analyst, Ministry of Cabinet Affairs, Prime Minister’s Office
Ukraine. Oleksii Molchanovskyi, Chair, Expert Committee on the Development of Artificial intelligence in Ukraine
USA. Saif M. Khan, Senior Advisor to the Secretary for Critical and Emerging Technologies, U.S. Department of Commerce
United Kingdom. Dame Angela McLean, Government Chief Scientific Adviser
United Nations. Amandeep Gill, UN Tech Envoy
Give up? My team identified these interesting aspects:
- No Facebook, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI or any other US giant in the AI space
- Academics and political “professionals” dominate the list
- A speed and scale mismatch between AI diffusion and panel report writing.
Net net: More words will be generated for large language models to ingest.
Stephen E Arnold, February 2, 2024
It Is Here: The AI Generation
February 2, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Yes, another digital generation has arrived. The last two or three have been stunning, particularly when compared to my childhood in central Illinois. We played hide and seek; now the youthful create fake Taylor Swift videos. Ah, progress.
I read “Qustodio Releases 5th Annual Report Studying Children’s Digital Habits, Born Connected: The Rise of the AI Generation.” I have zero clue if the data are actual factual. With the recent information about factual creativity at the Harvard medical brain trust, nothing will surprise me. Nevertheless, let me highlight several factoids and then, of course, offer some unwanted Beyond Search comments. Hey, it is a free blog, and I have some friskiness in my dinobaby step.
Memories. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. Not even close to what I specified.
The sample involved “400,000 families and schools.” I don’t remember too much about my Statistics 101 course 60 years ago, but the sample size seems — interesting. Here’s what Qustodio found:
YouTube is number one for streaming, kiddies spent 60 percent more time on TikTok
How much time goes to couch potato-ing? Here’s the answer:
TikTok continued to captivate with children spending a global average of 112 minutes daily on the app – up from 107 in 2022. UK kids were particularly fond of the bottomless scroll as they racked up 127 mins/day.
Why read, play outdoors, or fiddle with a chemistry set? Just kick back and check out ASMR, being thin, and dance move videos. Sounds tasty, doesn’t it?
And what is the most popular kiddie app? Here’s the answer:
Snapchat.
If you want to buy the full report, click this link.
Several observations:
- The smart software angle may be in the full report, but the summary skirts the issue, recycling the same grim numbers: More video, less of other activities like being a child
- Will this “generation” of people be able to differentiate reality from fake anything? My hunch is that the belief that these young folks have super tuned baloney radar may be — baloney.
- A sample of 400,000? Yeah.
Net net: I am glad to be an old dinobaby. Really, really happy.
Stephen E Arnold, February 2, 2024
Flailing and Theorizing: The Internet Is Dead. Swipe and Chill
February 2, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I do not spend much time with 20 somethings, 30 something, 40 somethings, 50 somethings, or any other somethings. I watch data flow into my office, sell a few consulting jobs, and chuckle at the downstream consequences of several cross-generation trends my team and I have noticed. What’s a “cross generational trend”? The phrase means activities and general perceptions which are shared among some youthful college graduates and a harried manager working in a trucking company. There is the mobile phone obsession. The software scheduler which strips time from an individual with faux urgency or machine-generated pings and dings. There is the excitement of sports events, many of which may feature scripting. There is anomie or the sense of being along in a kayak carried to what may be a financial precipice. You get the idea.
Now the shriek of fear is emanating from online sources known as champions of the digital way. In this short essay, I want to highlight one of these; specifically, “The Era of the AI-Generated Internet Is Already Here: And It’s Time to Talk about AI Model Collapse.” I want to zoom the conclusion of the “real” news report and focus on the final section of the article, “The Internet Isn’t Completely Doomed.”
Here we go.
First, I want to point out that communication technologies are not “doomed.” In fact, these methods or techniques don’t go away. A good example are the clay decorations in some homes which way, “We love our Frenchie” or an Etsy plaque like this one:
Just a variation of a clay tablet produced in metal for an old-timey look. The communication technologies abundant today are likely to have similar stickiness. Doom, therefore, is Karen rhetoric in my opinion.
Second, the future is a return to the 1980s when for-fee commercial databases were trusted and expensive sources of electronic information. The “doom” write up predicts that content will retreat behind paywalls. I would like to point out that you are reading an essay in a public blog. I put my short writings online in 2008, using the articles as a convenient archive. When I am asked to give a lecture, I check out my blog posts. I find it a way to “refresh” my memory about past online craziness. My hunch is that these free, ad-free electronic essays will persist. Some will be short and often incomprehensible items on Pinboard.in; others will be weird TikTok videos spun into a written item pumped out via a social media channel on the Clear Web or the Dark Web (which seems to persist, doesn’t it?) When an important scientific discovery becomes known, that information becomes findable. Sure, it might be a year after the first announcement, but those ArXiv.org items pop up and are often findable because people love to talk, post, complain, or convert a non-reproducible event into a job at Harvard or Stanford. That’s not going to change.
A collapsed AI robot vibrated itself to pieces. Its model went off the rails and confused zeros with ones and ones with zeros. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. How are those security procedures today?
Third, search engine optimization is going to “change.” In order to get hired or become famous, one must call attention to oneself. Conferences, Zoom webinars, free posts on LinkedIn-type services — none of these will go away or… change. The reason is that unless one is making headlines or creating buzz, one becomes irrelevant. I am a dinobaby and I still get crazy emails about a blockchain report I did years ago. (The somewhat strident outfit does business as IGI with the url igi-global.com. When I open an email from this outfit, I can smell the desperation.) Other outfits are similar, very similar, but they hit the Amazon thing for some pricey cologne to convert the scent of overboardism into something palatable. My take on SEO: It’s advertising, promotion, PT Barnum stuff. It is, like clay tablets, in the long haul.
Finally, what about AI, smart software, machine learning, and the other buzzwords slapped on ho-hum products like a word processor? Meh. These are short cuts for the Cliff’s Notes’ crowd. Intellectual achievement requires more than a subscription to the latest smart software or more imagination than getting Mistral to run on your MacMini. The result of smart software is to widen the gap between people who are genuinely intelligent and knowledge value creators, and those who can use an intellectual automatic teller machine (ATM).
Net net: The Internet is today’s version of online. It evolves, often like gerbils or tribbles which plagued Captain Kirk. The larger impact is the return to a permanent one percent – 99 percent social structure. Believe me, the 99 percent are not going to be happy whether they can post on X.com, read craziness on a Dark Web forum, pay for an online subscription to someone on Substack, or give money to the New York Times. The loss of intellectual horsepower is the consequence of consumerizing online.
This dinobaby was around when online began. My colleagues and I knew that editorial controls, access policies, and copyright were important. Once the ATM-model swept over the online industry, today’s digital world was inevitable. Too bad no one listened when those who were creating online information were ignored and dismissed as Ivory Tower dwellers. “Doom”? No just a dawning of what digital information creates. Have fun. I am old and am unwilling to provide a coloring book and crayons for the digital information future and a model collapse. That’s the least of some folks’s worries. I need a nap.
Stephen E Arnold, February 1, 2024
Answering a Question Posed in an Essay about Search
February 1, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
One of my research team asked me to take a look at an essay located at TomCritchlow.com. “Notes on Search and AI: More Questions Than Answers” reflects the angst generated by generative artificial intelligence. The burr under the saddle of many online users is festering. The plumbing of search is leaking and many of the thumb-typing generation are getting their Airbirds soaked. The discomfort is palpable. One of the people with whom I chat mentioned that some smart software outfits did not return the financial results the MBA whiz kid analysts expected. (Hello, Microsoft?)
The cited essay ends with a question:
Beep boop. What are you thinking about?
Since the author asked, I will answer the question to the best of my ability.
Traditional research skills are irrelevant. Hit the mobile and query, “Pizza near me.” Yep, that works, just not for the small restaurant or “fact”. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. How is your email security today? Good enough I bet.
First, most of those who consider themselves good or great online searchers, the emergence of “smart” software makes it easy to find information. The problem is that for good or great online searchers, their ability to locate, verify, analyze, and distill “information” lags behind their own perception of their expertise. In general, the younger online searching expert, the less capable some are. I am basing this on the people with whom I speak in my online and in-person lectures. I am thinking that as these younger people grow older, the old-fashioned research skills will be either unknown, unfamiliar, or impossible. Information cannot be verified nor identified as authoritative. I am thinking that the decisions made based on actionable information is going to accelerate doors popping off aircraft, screwed up hospital patient information systems, and the melancholy of a young cashier when asked to make change by a customer who uses fungible money. Yes, $0.83 from $1.00 is $0.17. Honest.
Second, the jargon in the write up is fascinating. I like words similar to “precision,” “recall,” and “relevance,” among others. The essay explains the future of search with words like these:
Experiences, AI-generated and indexable
Interfaces, adaptive and just-in-time
LLM-powered alerts
Persistence
Predictability
Search quality
Signs
Slime helper
I am thinking that I cannot relate my concept of search and retrieval to the new world the write up references. I want to enter a query into a data base. For that database, I want to know what is in it, when it was updated, and why the editorial policies are for validity, timeliness, coverage, and other dinobaby concepts. In short, I want to do the research work using online when necessary. Other methods are usually required. These include talking to people, reading books, and using a range of reference tools at that endangered institution, the library.
Third, I am thinking that the equipment required for analytic thinking, informed analysis, and judicious decision making is either discarded or consigned to the junk heap.
In short, I am worried because I don’t want indexable experiences, black-box intermediaries, and predictability. I want to gather information and formulate my views based on content I can cite. That’s the answer, and it is not one the author of the essay is seeking. Too bad. Yikes, slime helper.
Stephen E Arnold, February 1, 2024
Robots, Hard and Soft, Moving Slowly. Very Slooowly. Not to Worry, Humanoids
February 1, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
CNN that bastion of “real” journalism published a surprising story: “We May Not Lose Our Jobs to Robots So Quickly, MIT Study Finds.” Wait, isn’t MIT the outfit which had a tie up with the interesting Jeffrey Epstein? Oh, well.
The robots have learned that they can do humanoid jobs quickly and easily. But the robots are stupid, right? Yes, they are, but the managers looking for cost reductions and workforce reductions are not. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. How the security of the MSFT email today?
The story presents as actual factual an MIT-linked study which seems to go against the general drift of smart software, smart machines, and smart investors. The story reports:
new research suggests that the economy isn’t ready for machines to put most humans out of work.
The fresh research finds that the impact of AI on the labor market will likely have a much slower adoption than some had previously feared as the AI revolution continues to dominate headlines. This carries hopeful implications for policymakers currently looking at ways to offset the worst of the labor market impacts linked to the recent rise of AI.
The story adds:
One key finding, for example, is that only about 23% of the wages paid to humans right now for jobs that could potentially be done by AI tools would be cost-effective for employers to replace with machines right now. While this could change over time, the overall findings suggest that job disruption from AI will likely unfurl at a gradual pace.
The intriguing facet of the report and the research itself is that it seems to suggest that the present approach to smart stuff is working just fine, thank you very much. Why speed up or slow down? The “unfurling” is a slow process. No need for these professionals to panic as major firms push forward with a range of hard and soft robots:
- Consulting firms. Has MIT checked out Deloitte’s posture toward smart software and soft robots?
- Law firms. Has MIT talked to any of the Top 20 law firms about their use of smart software?
- Academic researchers. Has MIT talked to any of the graduate students or undergraduates about their use of smart software or soft robots to generate bibliographies, summaries of possibly non-reproducible studies, or books mentioning their professor?
- Policeware vendors. Companies like Babel Street and Recorded Future are putting pedal to the metal with regard to smart software.
My hunch is that MIT is not paying attention to the happy robots at Tesla or the bad actors using software robots to poke through the cyber defenses of numerous outfits.
Does CNN ask questions? Not that I noticed. Plus, MIT appears to want good news PR. I would too if I were known to be pals with certain interesting individuals.
Stephen E Arnold, February 1, 2024
AI and SEO: If This Does Not Kill Relevance, Nothing Will
February 1, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
The integration of AI into search engines may help consumers better find what they are looking for and reduce or eliminate creepy intrusive ads. More importantly, for readers of Adweek anyway, that dynamic is an opportunity for advertisers. Now they can more finely target ads while charming potential customers with friendly algorithmic rapport. That is the gist of write-up, “3 Major Ways Generative AI Is Redefining Search.” Under the subheadings “Dialogue over monologue,” “Offers not ads,” and “Subjective data over objective data,” writer Christian J. Ward details how marketers can leverage the human-esque qualities of AI interactions to entice consumers. For example, under the first of these “pivotal shifts,” Ward writes:
“With conversational AI as the interface, consumers can share exactly what they want to share, and brands can focus on great responses instead of suboptimal guesses. … When a consumer freely offers details on what they seek and why, the brand can leverage that zero-party data to personalize their experience. Trust is built through dialogues, not infinite monologues algorithmically ranked in search engine results. Most importantly, these AI-driven dialogues open unprecedented opportunities for brands to engage each person individually.”
Yes, trust is built through dialogues. But is that still the case when one party is a fake person? Probably, for many consumers. Ward goes on to describe ways companies can capitalize on these “conversations:”
“Conversations like these build trust and enable the brand to customize an offer that meets the needs of that individual customer. This is the future of offer-based interactions, directly controlled by a dialogue with the customer. Moving from privacy-invasive ad models to trust-centric dialogue models will take time. But for objective questions—which often directly precede conversion and purchase decisions—brands will utilize gen AI aggressively to take back the consumer dialogue from centralized search systems that seek to monetize ad spend.”
Reduce one’s ad budget while using salary-free AI to build lucrative customer rapport? Sounds great. Unless one’s interest is in truly relevant search results, not marketing ploys. Welcome to the next iteration of SEO.
Cynthia Murrell, February 1, 2024
Techno Feudalist Governance: Not a Signal, a Rave Sound Track
January 31, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
One of the UK’s watchdog outfits published a 30-page report titled “One Click Away: A Study on the Prevalence of Non-Suicidal Self Injury, Suicide, and Eating Disorder Content Accessible by Search Engines.” I suggest that you download the report if you are interested in what the consequences of poor corporate governance are. I recommend reading the document while watching your young children or grand children playing with their mobile phones or tablet devices.
Let me summarize the document for you because its contents provide some color and context for the upcoming US government hearings with a handful of techno feudalist companies:
Web search engines and social media services are one-click gateways to self-harm and other content some parents and guardians might deem inappropriate.
Does this report convey information relevant to the upcoming testimony of selected large US technology companies in the Senate? I want to say, “Yes.” However, the realistic answer is, “No.”
Techmeme, an online information service, displayed its interest in the testimony with these headlines on January 31, 2024:
Screenshots are often difficult to read. The main story is from the weird orange newspaper whose content is presented under this Techmeme headline:
Ahead of the Senate Hearing, Mark Zuckerberg Calls for Requiring Apple and Google to Verify Ages via App Stores…
Ah, ha, is this a red herring intended to point the finger at outfits not on the hot seat in the true blue Senate hearing room?
The New York Times reports on a popular DC activity: A document reveal:
Ahead of the Senate Hearing, US Lawmakers Release 90 Pages of Internal Meta Emails…
And to remind everyone that an allegedly China linked social media service wants to do the right thing (of course!), Bloomberg’s angle is:
In Prepared Senate Testimony, TikTok CEO Shou Chew Says the Company Plans to Spend $2B+ in 2024 on Trust and Safety Globally…
Therefore, the Senate hearing on January 31, 2024 is moving forward.
What will be the major take-away from today’s event? I would suggest an opportunity for those testifying to say, “Senator, thank you for the question” and “I don’t have that information. I will provide that information when I return to my office.”
And the UK report? What? And the internal governance of certain decisions related to safety in the techno feudal firms? Secondary to generating revenue perhaps?
Stephen E Arnold, January 31, 2024
Journalism Is … Exciting, Maybe Even Thrilling
January 31, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Journalism is a field in an unusual industrial location. It is an important career because journalists are dedicated to sharing current and important information. Journalism, however, is a difficult field because news outlets are fading faster than the Internet’s current meme. Another alarming problem for journalists, especially those who work internationally, is the increasing risk of incarceration. The Committee To Protect Journalists (CPJ) reported that according to a “2023 Prison Census: Jailed Journalists Near Record High; Israel Imprisonments Spike.”
Due to the October 7 terrorist attack by Palestinian-led Hamas and the start of a new war, Israel ranked sixth on the list countries that imprison journalists. Israel ironically tied with Iran and is behind China, Myanmar, Belarus, Russia, and Vietnam. CPJ recorded that 320 journalists were incarcerated in 2023. It’s the second-highest number since CPJ started tracking in 1992. CPJ explained the high number of imprisonments is due to authoritarian regimes silencing the opposition. One hundred sixty-eight, more than half of the journalists, are charged with terrorism for critical coverage and spreading “false news.”
China is one of the worst offenders with Orwellian censorship laws, human rights violations, and a crackdown on pro-democracy protests and news. Myanmar’s coup in 2021 and Belarus’s controversial 2020 election incited massive upheavals and discontentment with citizens. Reporters from these countries are labeled as extremists when they are imprisoned.
Israel ties with Iran in 2023 due to locking up a high number of Palestinian journalists. They’re kept behind bars without cause on the grounds to prevent future crimes. Iran might have less imprisoned journalists than 2022 but the country is still repressing the media. Russia also keeps a high number of journalists jailed due to its war with Ukraine.
Jailed reporters face horrific conditions:
“Prison conditions are harsh in the nations with the worst track records of detaining journalists. Country reports released by the U.S. Department of State in early 2023 found that prisoners in China, Myanmar, Belarus, Russia, and Vietnam typically faced physical and sexual abuse, overcrowding, food and water shortages, and inadequate medical care.”
They still face problems even when they’ve served their sentence:
“Many journalists face curbs on their freedom even after they’ve served their time. This not only affects their livelihoods, but allows repressive governments to continue silencing their voices.”
These actions signify the importance of the US Constitution’s First Amendment. Despite countless attempts for politicians and bad actors to silence journalists abroad and on home soil, the First Amendment is still upheld. It’s so easy to take it for granted.
Whitney Grace, January 31, 2024
A Glimpse of Institutional AI: Patients Sue Over AI Denied Claims
January 31, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
AI algorithms are revolutionizing business practices, including whether insurance companies deny or accept medical coverage. Insurance companies are using more on AI algorithms to fast track paperwork. They are, however, over relying on AI to make decisions and it is making huge mistakes by denying coverage. Patients are fed up with their medical treatments being denied and CBS Moneywatch reports that a slew of “Lawsuits Take Aim At Use Of AI Tool By Health Insurance Companies To Process Claims.”
The defendants in the AI insurance lawsuits are Humana and United Healthcare. These companies are using the AI model nHPredict to process insurance claims. On December 12, 2023, a class action lawsuit was filed against Humana, claiming nHPredict denied medically necessary care for elderly and disabled patients under Medicare Advantage. A second lawsuit was filed in November 2023 against United Healthcare. United Healthcare also used nHPredict to process claims. The lawsuit claims the insurance company purposely used the AI knowing it was faulty and about 90% of its denials were overridden.
The AI model is supposed to work:
“NHPredicts is a computer program created by NaviHealth, a subsidiary of United Healthcare, that develops personalized care recommendations for ill or injured patients, based on “real world experience, data and analytics,’ according to its website, which notes that the tool “is not used to deny care or to make coverage determinations.’
But recent litigation is challenging that last claim, alleging that the “nH Predict AI Model determines Medicare Advantage patients’ coverage criteria in post-acute care settings with rigid and unrealistic predictions for recovery.” Both United Healthcare and Humana are being accused of instituting policies to ensure that coverage determinations are made based on output from nHPredicts’ algorithmic decision-making.”
Insurance companies deny coverage whenever they can. Now a patient can talk to an AI customer support system about an AI system’s denying a claim. Will the caller be faced with a voice answering call loop on steroids? Answer: Oh, yeah. We haven’t seen or experienced what’s coming down the cost-cutting information highway. The blip on the horizon is interesting, isn’t it?
Whitney Grace, January 31, 2024
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