Hertz' AI System That Scans for "Damage" on Rental Cars Is Turning Into an Epic Disaster
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Sometimes is doing a lot of work here though
Sure, I'm just not sure if it's more or less often than when it's equivalent. It's frequent enough that you should be careful if quality is what you're after.
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I'm not sure how you can make the points you make, and still call it a "generally brilliant solution"
Because the technology itself is not the problem, it's the application. Not complicated.
The technology is literally the problem as it’s not working
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The technology is literally the problem as it’s not working
There's literally nothing wrong with the technology. The problem is the application.
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There's literally nothing wrong with the technology. The problem is the application.
The technology is NOT DOING WHAT ITS MEANT TO DO - it is IDENTIFYING DAMAGE WHERE THERE IS NONE - the TECHNOLOGY is NOT working as it should
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Sounds like that shit with dodgy smoking detection in a hotel from last week..
Those do exactly what they're supposed to do. They're even explicitly advertised as providing new revenue streams.
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The technology is NOT DOING WHAT ITS MEANT TO DO - it is IDENTIFYING DAMAGE WHERE THERE IS NONE - the TECHNOLOGY is NOT working as it should
Just because THE TECHNOLOGY IS NOT PERFECT does not mean it is NOT DOING WHAT IT'S intended to do. Sorry I'm having trouble controlling THE VOLUME OF MY VOICE.
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Fair game. Give me a grease pen and let me mark everything I see. By the time I'm done, they'll owe me money.
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I don't understand how this works out badly for the person using a debit card. You pay for the vehicle and if they try to make you pay more you ask for proof and if you don't get it you walk away.
Or do they require a collateral fee when renting?
The other thing not being mentioned is that credit cards and debit cards have different legally required protections.
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I'm not sure how you can make the points you make, and still call it a "generally brilliant solution"
The entire point of this system - like anything a giant company like Hertz does - is not to be fair to the customer. The point is to screw the customer over to make money.
Not allowing human employees to challenge the incorrect AI decision is very intentional, because it defers your complaint to a later time when you have to phone customer support.
This means you no longer have the persuasion power of being there in person at the time of the assessment, with the car still there too, and means you have to muster the time and effort to call customer services - which they are hoping you won't bother doing. Even if you do call, CS hold all the cards at that point and can easily swerve you over the phone.
It's all part of the business strategy.
That's why you chargeback. Don't waste time arguing with the machine, cut it off at the cashflow
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Plus they are worshipped as a god in some sectors of the universe.
Katniss everdeen
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Agreed. But most people have neither the time nor capacity to track all of these specifics, so popular discussions of AI-related technologies inevitably break down into a mud pit of people talking past each other about various different topics.
Which, if you think about it, is true of most public discussions about any complex topic. It almost invariably devolves into a miscommunication or a discussion about semantics.
People have the capacity to track genres and whatnot, what's so different about this?
I think people could understand if explained probably, but unfortunately journalists rarely dive deeply enough to do that. It really doesn't need to get too involved:
- machine learning - tell an algorithm what it's allowed to change and what a "good" output is and it'll handle the rest to find the best solution
- Bayesian networks - probability of an event given a previous event; this is the underpinnings of LLMs
- LLM - similar to Bayesian networks, but with a lot more data
And so on. If people can associate a technology with common applications, it'll work a lot more like genres and people will start to intuit limitations of various technologies.
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People have the capacity to track genres and whatnot, what's so different about this?
I think people could understand if explained probably, but unfortunately journalists rarely dive deeply enough to do that. It really doesn't need to get too involved:
- machine learning - tell an algorithm what it's allowed to change and what a "good" output is and it'll handle the rest to find the best solution
- Bayesian networks - probability of an event given a previous event; this is the underpinnings of LLMs
- LLM - similar to Bayesian networks, but with a lot more data
And so on. If people can associate a technology with common applications, it'll work a lot more like genres and people will start to intuit limitations of various technologies.
What's different is that most people will see it as "tech stuff" and mentally file it in a drawer with spare extension cords and adapters. They don't care to deeply study or catalog things. Nerds care about that, and most people here, including me, are nerds, but most people are not nerds and consider learning to be a form of torture.
People writ-large don't care about proper genre labels either, they just kinda pick a vibe and guess off of it. Look at all the -core suffixed aesthetic names that cropped up in the last decade.
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The term AI itself is a shifting of goalposts. What was AI 50 years ago* is now AGI, so we can call this shit AI though it's nothing of the sort. And everybody's falling for the hype: governments, militaries, police forces, care providers, hospitals... not to speak of the insane amounts of energy & resources this wastes, and other highly problematic, erm, problems. What a fucking disaster.
If it wasn't for those huge caveats I'd be all for it. Use it for what it can do (which isn't all that much), research it. But don't fall for the shit some tech bro envisions for us.
* tbf fucking around with that term probably isn't a new thing either, and science itself is divided on how to define it.
We called the basic movement of the grabbers in Defender AI to distinguish it from the fixed movement of Space Invaders. We still call that AI in modern videogames.
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Oh, so Hertz has gotten wise to... every online platform that exists: Outsourcing all responsibility for their user-hostile bullshit to some vague "system" that cannot be held accountable.
I'm so sorry but the advertised cost has doubled because... Computer says so! No, sir, there's nothing I can do, sir, you see it's the system.
And you can't go anywhere else, because everyone else is doing it (or soon will be) too!
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Just because THE TECHNOLOGY IS NOT PERFECT does not mean it is NOT DOING WHAT IT'S intended to do. Sorry I'm having trouble controlling THE VOLUME OF MY VOICE.
There's literally nothing wrong with the technology.
Pick a lane troll
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I think it's generally a brilliant solution but there are a couple of problems here:
- The scanner seems to flag fucking everything and charge for minor damage where a human would probably flag it as wear.
- No one is allowed to correct the scanner:
Perturbed by the apparent mistake, the user tried to speak to employees and managers at the Hertz counter, but none were able to help, and all "pointed fingers at the 'AI scanner.'" They were told to contact customer support — but even that proved futile after representatives claimed they "can’t do anything."
Sounds to me like they're just trying to replace those employees. That's why they won't let them interfere.
It's really funny here. There already exists software that does this stuff. It's existed for quite a while. I personally know a software engineer that works at a company that creates this stuff. It's sold to insurance companies. Hertz version must just totally suck.
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The technology is NOT DOING WHAT ITS MEANT TO DO - it is IDENTIFYING DAMAGE WHERE THERE IS NONE - the TECHNOLOGY is NOT working as it should
Do you hold everything to such a standard?
Stop lights are meant to direct traffic. If someone runs a red light, is the technology not working as it should?
The technology here, using computer vision to automatically flag potential damage, needed to be implemented alongside human supervision - an employee should be able to walk by the car, see that the flagged damage doesn't actually exist, and override the algorithm.
The technology itself isn't bad, it's how hertz is using it that is.
I believe the unfortunate miscommunication here is that when @Ulrich@feddit.org said the solution was brilliant, they were referring to the technology as the "solution", and others are referring to the implementation as a whole as the "solution"
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There's literally nothing wrong with the technology.
Pick a lane troll
Society typically understands "there's nothing wrong with x" to mean it's performing within acceptable boundaries, and not to mean that it has achieved perfection.
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The technology is NOT DOING WHAT ITS MEANT TO DO - it is IDENTIFYING DAMAGE WHERE THERE IS NONE - the TECHNOLOGY is NOT working as it should
The technology isn't there to accurately assess damage. It's there to give Hertz an excuse to charge you extra money. It's working exactly as the ghouls in the C-suite like.
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Okay so...in the rare event I need to rent a car, any suggestions on who to use that isn't Hertz and sister companies?
Enterprise has been good.
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