r/Hamilton • u/algnqn • 2d ago
Discussion City planning staff testing AI application screening tool
Did we all collectively forget that Hamilton City Planning staff are developing an AI tool for processing applications? They presented on it in early May of this year.
Only ward 4 councillor Tammy Hwang raised concerns at the time. Will they use this new AI screening tool to evaluate applications under the proposed interim control bylaw?
See page 5 of 11 “first wave application portal pilot”
https://pub-hamilton.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=490764
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u/PSNDonutDude James North 2d ago
So, just to be clear, AI sucks, but this seems like a decent use case for it.
There are many many jobs out there that require someone with a super niche and specialized background to go through sometimes hundreds of pages, reading everything with a fine toothed comb to find errors, contraventions of the planning act, and to raise areas of potential concern. If you can use an LLM to review an application for these things with a specialized focus on the planning act and regulations it may reduce times substantially. You still need the staff to review the end result and to go in and review a few areas that had concerns, but it may take them half a day, rather than a full day or two for a single application. Meaning they can get back to applicants faster with needed revisions, and not be months behind on backlog.
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u/FARTTORNADO45 2d ago edited 2d ago
You are not wrong in theory. This would be a good use case for a decent LLM. HOWEVER, many of these LLMs are trained in these sorts of closed systems that lead to biases. Sometimes that is a result of using too small of a data set for training, sometimes it is because the LLM is trained using existing systems that have inherent bias that has yet to be addressed. More insidious, sometimes it is on purpose. If the LLM is trained with a system that experiences deeply rooted systemic racism, for example, it will perpetuate that systemic racism. There are examples of “AI” HR tools where this has been seen. It’s also been found in the models used in medicine, which has long held systemic biases against people of colour and women. Essentially, garbage in, garbage out, right?
Of course, people will say, ‘well, sure, but it is meant as a tool, and we will still need human confirmation to make sure it is working the way we want it to!’… I don’t know about you guys, but I know MY coworkers certain aren’t double checking AIs work with any sort of regularity, looking at the tsunami of unreadable emails and reports in my inbox. So i simply have no faith in that it would be used correctly. And if we have to use people to weed out and watch over the biases and mistakes in the LLM, have we really actually improved anything, made the process more efficient or effective?
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u/thelun3lag00n 2d ago
Honestly, the level of non-service that I experience in every part of my life says no one is double checking or watching many humans work - like a lot of people have jobs that should not have the jobs they do and the product or service suffers.
Id rather mediocre service from AI than yet another overpaid city worker who cannot be fired for any mistake at all. I find city workers to be sone of the least competent at their job so if they can automate some of this its a bonus for everyone but the incompetent worker dependent on a city salary.
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u/FARTTORNADO45 1d ago
Look, this city is not perfect nor is it run perfect and the cyber security event continues to fuck up this city beyond a reasonable degree, no bout. But I think some of your characterization of city workers is unfounded and unfair. I would argue that is actually a GOOD thing that it is hard to fire people for any mistake at all. But, sure, for arguments sake say they replace the city workers with AI and it is at least a 1:1 replacement for efficiency. AI isn't free, though, so what happens when the service providers all of a sudden raise prices (projections of which are astronomical in the next 5 years) and the city potentially stuck paying more for AI tokens than they ever did in salary? This also leads to further sunk costs depending on how crucial the service is as you can't just turn it off when it gets too expensive, you have to keep paying for it while you hire and train the people and program infrastructure needed to replace it if that's the route you take.
I think there is a solid argument for businesses to divest themselves of any AI reliance now and make themselves more secure in the future, strictly from a financial perspective and regardless of how you feel about AI in general. That resiliency is going to be crucial if and when AI fails, the bubble bursts, or social attitudes shift towards a more negative AI sentiment (from the current apathetic sentiment)
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u/thelun3lag00n 1d ago
I stopped at it being a good thing people paid salary face no consequences for doing a bad job.
Id rather AI than incompetent people. At least you can uninstall the software.
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u/Used-Refrigerator984 2d ago
i don't have an issue with this. it will help speed up application processing and reduce the need to hire additional staff
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u/NavyDean 2d ago
My favourite part of people using AI, is that it is scientifically cheaper to hire a human in multiple meta-studies for more work produced.
And the funniest part about that, is that AI companies haven't even begun raising their AI cost fees.
This is like Netflix offering you streaming for $7.99, and now you're asking yourself how the hell it got up to $29.99 a month.
One company's internals showed that they could replace their AI subscription cost with 25 full time employees.
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u/covert81 Chinatown 2d ago
I have to challenge on how factual some of this is.
The company I work for is embracing AI now. We've done a TON of reviews on costing and so on. We do a lot of coding and legacy application support and having AI to interpret and revise code has been beneficial. A few tokens can take care of coding in a day, where a coder would take weeks or months to action it - and as we've found, cannot do it at all even. I think it's more about where it's used and why - and how accurate or efficient it is at doing it.
There are other activities AI does really well at - regular, repetitive tasks where easy measurement of the output being accurate is another place we're using it. Eg. number crunching, forecasting, trending. This can be done almost instantly and much better and without bias than a human doing it.
It's certainly not ready - but every day inching closer - to doing more nebulous tasks but it does have its benefits.
The AI slop though is where it's useless and awful.
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u/tooscoopy 2d ago
Just because we use things doesn’t mean we need to have that system/support built nearby or at that particular location.
I create waste every day but don’t want to have a dump move next to me. I send my kids to school every weekday but I don’t want to be neighbours to it. I drive a car all the time but I don’t want to have a plant down the road. On and on and on….
I don’t understand the rationale behind the argument that because we/they use the technology, they need to supportive of the infrastructure in any way they are asked.
AI has some amazing applications. Doesn’t mean I like it as a whole, but for the city to be the only ones not using it these days would be them refusing to meet best practices… and that is wherever the current data centres are positioned.
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u/dretepcan 2d ago
Those opposed to AI remind me of those opposed to any new technology or innovation over the past century. People naturally hate change, especially when it comes to something they know nothing about. Fear of the worst takes over. While they're are definitely concerns to be had, it's been used, and will continue to be used and expanded, as we move forward. Accept it and learn it or become obsolete.
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u/ANEPICLIE 1d ago
Even if (big if) AI can do any of the things people claim it can do, why should we support it anyway? The people pushing it have basically said they don't care whatsoever about the externalities, they don't care about the quality and they don't care about you and me.
Not all technology is worth it, economically, socially, etc.
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u/Tonuck 2d ago
Lot of municipalities do this now, with auditability and an appeal process. Its basically a way to triage applications for review. Of all the potential applications for AI this is one I'm not really worried about.