From the Los Angeles Times:
John McGing couldn’t reach a human. That might be business-as-usual in this economy, but it wasn’t business; he had called the Social Security Administration, where the questions often aren’t generic and the callers tend to be older, disabled, or otherwise vulnerable Americans.
McGing, calling on behalf of his son, had an in-the-weeds question: how to prevent overpayments that the federal government might later claw back. His call was intercepted by an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot.
No matter what he said, the bot parroted canned answers to generic questions, not McGing’s obscure query. “If you do a key press, it didn’t do anything,” he said. Eventually, the bot “glitched or whatever” and got him to an agent.
It was a small but revealing incident. Unbeknownst to McGing, a former Social Security employee in Maryland, he had encountered a technological tool recently introduced by the agency. Former officials and longtime observers of the agency say the Trump administration rolled out a product that was tested but deemed not yet ready during the Biden administration. …
In interviews with KFF Health News, people who left the agency — some speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the Trump administration and its supporters — said they believe the new administration simply rushed out technologies developed, but deemed not yet ready, by the Biden administration. They also said the agency’s firing of thousands of employees resulted in the loss of experienced technologists who are best equipped to roll out these initiatives and address their weaknesses. …
Agency leaders and employees who first worked on the AI product during the Biden administration anticipated those types of difficulties. Escobar-Alava said they had worked on such a bot, but wanted to clean up the policy and regulation data it was relying on first.
“We wanted to ensure the automation produced consistent and accurate answers, which was going to take more time,” she said. Instead, it seems the Trump administration opted to introduce the bot first and troubleshoot later, Escobar-Alava said. …
3 comments:
On the road to privatization.
That is how it has gone for everything. Blow it up and then figure it out. A phrase we have heard executives say is they are trying to rebuild the airplane while it is flying.
So it doesn’t surprise me that they would release the chat bot and then figure out how to use it. I honestly think the touting that AI is helping 90% of the calls is actually 85% people getting frustrated and hanging up and only 5% actually getting the help they sought.
Former SSA employee here. This is not an uncommon event. I spent 30+ years at the agency (retired 2021) and during that time on numerous occasions the agency rolled out new technology, programs, policies, etc. that weren't ready for primetime. With variously negative results. So in fairness I don't think this can be blamed solely on the current administration.
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