Los Angeles is using AI to predict who might become homeless and help before they do
(www.npr.org)
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2023 18:00
https://lemmy.world/post/6292471
from L4s@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world on 04 Oct 2023 18:00
https://lemmy.world/post/6292471
Los Angeles is using AI to predict who might become homeless and help before they do::undefined
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
The call was from the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, part of a first-of-its-kind experiment to try and curb homelessness numbers, which keep going up despite massive spending.
The program tracks data from seven county agencies, including emergency room visits, crisis care for mental health, substance abuse disorder diagnosis, arrests and sign-ups for public benefits like food aid.
She’s used the allocated money for payday loan debt, appliances, laptops and, recently, an e-bike for someone whose mental illness made it difficult to take public transportation.
Theus ticks off a list of needs: car repairs, paying back due rent and utilities, restoring food aid for the boys.
But there aren’t nearly enough federal housing vouchers to meet the need, and Theus says wait times have gotten longer as cities try to help the growing number of people who are unhoused.
Depending on its long-term results, Los Angeles’ proactive approach could add much needed evidence for what works to prevent homelessness, says Beth Shinn, an expert on the issue at Vanderbilt University and also an adviser to the L.A. program.
The original article contains 1,774 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 90%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
This is what state run AI models should be doing, not any of that other wack ass shit
Definitely. Policy should be made on the basis of what’s proven to be effective, not ideology.
AI could be more effective, provided that what’s been fed into it is not garbage
Color me skeptical, considering this city specifically has the single most notoriously corrupt and violent police force in the history of the nation. Yeah, that model is being trained to “help”.
If you’ve never worked with local governments, you may not realize how independent these departments can be. And also that the people who go into this line of work usually really want to help people. I can’t speak to the situation in LA directly but I seriously doubt they would be sharing their tools with the police unless there was political pressure to do so. Which I think is unlikely in LA.
That’s a non-zero chance that LLM is safely secured and incapable of being used for unethical reasons, no matter how “independent” the political groups are.
They’re going to get it regardless. Question is will we
They can just build their own model if they want to. It’s not that hard, especially since the police have a lot of money. So the question is more do we allow this than will they somehow steal it from another unrelated program.
No thanks. If this is remotely successful these fucks will next use it to Minority Report us.
Next?
<img alt="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2021/04/26/lawsuit-florida-county-uses-predictive-policing-to-arrest-residents-for-petty-code-violations/?sh=50e301bc2d0f" src="https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicksibilla/2021/04/26/lawsuit-florida-county-uses-predictive-policing-to-arrest-residents-for-petty-code-violations/?sh=50e301bc2d0f">
What could also help is a department of housing that anyone could walk into that provides them with temporary housing that leads to full time housing if needed.
I agree 100% as long as the criteria for obtaining government help is passing a drug test. I’m more than happy to have my tax dollars help someone who fell on hard times and needs some assistance to become a productive member of society again. I am not happy with my tax dollars going to house someone who would rather feed their meth or opiate addiction than get a job. Let them dig their hole and bury themselves in it.
Except that’s not what happens. What happens is your tax dollars go to locking those people up, cleaning up their encampments, paying for their ER visits
That’s great. I’ll do my part to help pay to keep them in jail. At least there, they’re not shitting in communal areas, leaving used needles in the park, and breaking into houses.
That’s been working really well, huh
.
I’m far from pure and perfect, and if I ever need help, I hope it’s available. Addicts should have access to rehab. If they choose to continue using drugs or refuse help, fuck them. If they take the help that’s provided and get clean, I hope they are successful and happy in life.
Just keep in mind that you could get addicted to drugs too. A lot of addicts were squares that came off prescribed medication and went straight to illegal drugs due to continued pain. A person’s likelihood to become addicted to drugs also has a lot to do with their genetics, it’s not really a moral failing like you seem to think it is. As for them shitting up the parks, littering, etc, yeah it sucks. Remember that they aren’t lucid nor do they perceive any reason to respect a society that doesn’t respect them.
I’m not proposing any specific action. I don’t know the solution. I’m just saying chill out and be less hateful.
I don’t see addiction as a moral failing; it’s a disease. That’s why I am strongly in favor of robust social programs to treat mental health and addiction. All health care should be socialized in my opinion, but that’s a discussion for another day.
My problem is with people who are continually offered help yet choose not to accept it. I have seen it happen to people I know on more than one occasion. If rehab and sober living facilities are available, but someone makes the choice to continue their lifestyle of addiction or alcoholism, I have absolutely no sympathy for them.
Society should provide the resources for people to succeed in life. If they choose not to take advantage of them, that’s their problem, not mine.
Fuck you. Addicts are humans and should be treated with respect and decency.
Just give this more funding:
epath.org
I have a lot of concerns about AI, but if it’s getting people help and preventing them from ending up on the streets, I’m all for it.
Who needs AI for that?!
At the current rate of inflation vs rent: Everyone. There is no might.
Yeah, I’ve got red flags all over my “minority report”.
Yeah, LA has pretty easy calculus for this. Everyone in the sub million / year earning bracket Is high risk! Woukd be really interesting if some millionaires do start popping up on this thing and it turns out it’s a good predictor of soon to crash stocks or doomed tech startups!
The biggest problem I have with this idea comes from my recent experiences over the past few days with GPT-3.5 in particular.
Things like not being able to remember last responses or prompts, just making up facts, or data being outdated (September 2021 for GPT-3.5) and needing to be updated. Until issues like that are less of an issue, I don’t foresee being actually usable for cities or really anything outside of maybe just generating nonsense or random code snippets.
Also, I have concerns you’d see this being taken and used against minorities to discriminate against them. Whether that’s intentional or not I can’t say.
Based on the sparse information in the article, they’re training the model based on actual data points, not just feeding the data in human-readable format to a LLM.
AI they are talking about is most likely completely different than chatgpt.
They are likely labeling people “at risk” using some very reliable old-school ML algorithm, such as xgboost.
Biases are clearly a problem, but they are more manageable than human biases, because of the mathematical form that help finding and removing them. This is why for instance EU regulations force to have mathematical models in many area, to replace “human intuition”. Because mathematical models are better for customers.
They aren’t doing anything new, just calling it AI
Maybe, and this might be a bit out there but hear me out, maybe we should bin housing last policies and switch to housing first. Since it’s been, ya know, proven to reduce costs and help people.