From a Request for Information published by the Social Security Administration:
SSA is looking for a Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) solution capable of:
- assisting SSA developers in developing code more expeditiously, and/or
- transforming Legacy Code to modern languages for the purpose of refactoring Legacy Systems to leverage modern technologies and platforms. ...
10 comments:
They are already using AI in Systems. An employee just won an award for using AI to analyze 800# call transcripts.
The legacy code they're talking about is called Cobal which is a dead computer language which hardly anyone knows anymore. An AI can translate cobal to any other computer language in minutes for free.
@5:37 - Wow...Cobol is 60 years old, that's quite a legacy! I was trained on Cobol in 1990. I've never used it in real life. I do hope the world (SSA and such) is ready for AI, and that AI is ready for us!!!
Ah yes, let's try (again?) to replace COBOL, the most secure, stable and reliable programming language in the entire history of computer software, one that is still used today in places where security, stability and reliability is critical...
...With Java, a programming language that is less reliable, less stable, has a larger history of security vulnerabilities, and is missing a ton of COBOL's (very much needed) features...
...And we'll use an unfinished and error prone technology (artificial intelligence) that we're still working on figuring out (for at least another decade) in order to translate one into another!?!?
Just completely ignoring the fact that COBOL has features and types that simply don't (or can't) exist in Java. That it treats strings in a completely different way. That it has a concept of variable hierarchies (level numbers) that doesn't exist in Java. And so much more that makes translation into maintainable code an impossible task.
The tech debt from this will be legendary. What could possibly go wrong?
Or you could just train new junior COBOL devs, publish updated learning resources, and upgrade your compiler to a newer Standard COBOL edition (like the new 2023 one).
COBOL is not the problem, the problem are companies unwilling to put any effort into the COBOL ecosystem and thinking they can replace it with something worse.
DDS already uses AI to scan/review/summarize files. It's comming to OHO this year. program is called "Imagen"
COBOL.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL
AI coding is not error free. Any translation from Cobol would have to be rigorously tested. The initial translation is only the tip of the tip of the iceberg.
One thing they could do with AI within the agency is to add a non-generative AI research frontend to POMS (and maybe HALLEX).
I say non-generative AI, as it would never be meant to do actual work for people, but rather to simply help employees find the often obscure policy references they need more quickly to correctly do their own work.
I've experimented with Microsoft's Copilot at home on the public facing POMS and have found that it excels in finding obscure references that might otherwise take forever to find.
Simply stated, SSA's internal search tools for these databases absolutely suck so badly it really isn't funny. I literally cannot count the number of times in the past I tried to do even moderately complex searches for policy references I knew were there but either got error codes back instead of results or uncountable results that weren't ever what I was looking for.
Having such a tool would be an advantage to new employees, as the ability to effectively use POMS to locate policy quickly is a weak point and limiting factor for many new hires that tends to persist for years.
That's not gonna cause thousands of remands as DDS adjudicators or staff attorneys miss MDIs or subjective complaints.
They are testing generative AI to write favorable ALJ decisions right now, deploys this year.
Get ready for the robot future.
Post a Comment