Top
Best
New

Posted by jruohonen 1 day ago

Two Home Affairs officials suspended after AI 'hallucinations' found(www.citizen.co.za)
139 points | 38 comments
jonathanlydall 1 day ago|
As a South African, it is well known here (well, amongst the educated) that the vast majority of management level and up government positions are awarded based on who you know rather than what you know.

These people who don't actually do their job properly very rarely get dismissed, at worst, and only after a public debacle, they tend to be shuffled off to some other position in a different department that they're equally unqualified for.

This just one of the many, many, many, symptoms of this general problem.

testing22321 1 day ago||
I worked for a large North American telco.

New Director of core network had an all hands to introduce self and lay out some stuff. During someone’s welcome they said, seriously, in front of ~500 IT/Engineering people “wait, what is IPv6?”

Happens here all the time too.

forshaper 23 hours ago||
Worked at an ISP. An executive had trouble understanding the difference between WiFi and internet.
mothballed 20 hours ago||
Is there any reason why people who're able to aren't flocking to private towns like Orania other than muh racism. It's hard to imagine it's worse than whatever is happening in greater SA.
silver_silver 3 hours ago|||
My friend that is what the whites were doing on a national level before the election of 1994. You seem to still be catching up to what they realised 32 years ago.
jaapz 17 hours ago||||
You are asking why people aren't flocking to a town literally founded for white separatists to live in segregated?
mothballed 17 hours ago||
People flock to America even though it's extremely racist compared to many of the alternatives. Racism isn't the only factor a lot of people are using, they have to pick from a lot of suboptimal options in a country with high crime and rolling blackouts and play whatever cards they have. It does seem like they found a model that is working on other qualities better than many other parts of South Africa. I wouldn't write them off just because they're ethnically segregated.

I'd also point out I used "private towns like" so it could refer to some other perhaps less racist private town, just not sure what that is. If you are Afrikaners it looks like an underutilized option. It would be nice though if there were less segregated options as well.

solumunus 8 hours ago||
> I wouldn't write them off just because they're ethnically segregated.

Amazing.

Semaphor 19 hours ago|||
There are a few non whites in SA, who wouldn't be quite welcome. But I guess that's just *muh racism*
lgleason 1 day ago||
If this happened in the US or Europe it would be an interesting story. In South Africa, this is just par for the course and the quality of the work may not have been any better had it been written by the current people staffing home affairs.
mrweasel 1 day ago||
Currently it's happening in reverse in Denmark. People submit complaints to the municipalities about various things and increasingly those complaints are written with the help of AI (~20%). These cases take up a ton of time, because they are so difficult to process, referencing rules and regulations that doesn't exist, mixed in with some that do. These AI written complaints are typically way more complex, and 10 times the pages of a human written one.
abyssin 1 day ago||
I'm tempted to say it's fair game, since complexity has often had the advantageous side effect for governing bodies to make legitimate complaints impossible to voice for normal citizens.
stroebs 1 day ago||
Add the insult that these two officials have no doubt been suspended on full pay and benefits while the year-long investigation takes place at great expense to the tax payer. After which they are moved to a different government department as “punishment”.
miningape 1 day ago||
Nah don't worry, I'm sure Cyril will setup a commission for this
rubenvanwyk 1 day ago||
Nice seeing an article from SA here :) unfortunately, this surprises none of us.
dee_s101 1 day ago||
This is the tip of the iceberg. For example, the South African government included AI hallucinations in drafting its own AI policy: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/ai/644001-south-african-exper... . Imagine the AI slop in other documents including those that are classified, financial calculations etc.
overfeed 20 hours ago|
You should have read the rest of the article - that imcident was mentioned too.
orbital-decay 1 day ago||
Why does this page want to know my precise location?
hoektoe 1 day ago||
Something from my country, suprised they didn't get a promotion
aussieguy1234 1 day ago||
I would be totally unsurprising if corrupt politicians in developing countries start using AI extensively for basic governance.

What will be interesting is to see who does a better job. Corrupt politician by themselves, or the AI they outsource their job to.

scuff3d 21 hours ago||
"Hey use our thing! It's totally going to replace all humans! It's so awesome it can do your job for you!

...

BTW, it hallucinates... Like all the time.. and if you don't fact check our product you're responsible. Not us! We stole all your data to train it, we're making billions and billions of dollars off that theft, but you own all the liability"

Ozzie-D 1 day ago||
[flagged]
antonvs 1 day ago|
[flagged]
antonymoose 1 day ago|
Wait until you find out about IBM and Fanta!
antonvs 1 day ago||
Yes, I'm aware. But the point is not just that some businesses survived being Nazi-friendly - Hugo Boss is another example. The point is it's more unusual that a propaganda outlet whose entire purpose was to promote an evil regime survives that regime.
antonymoose 1 day ago|||
It would seem like a news paper being pro-regime is more of a survival strategy than anything else. Plenty of papers survived the Nazi era and exist today. Nothing unique to be seen in it here.
More comments...