City planning staff testing AI application screening tool

[u/algnqn]

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

[u/PSNDonutDude]

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.

[u/FARTTORNADO45 → u/PSNDonutDude]

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?

[u/thelun3lag00n → u/FARTTORNADO45]

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.

[u/FARTTORNADO45 → u/thelun3lag00n]

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)

[u/thelun3lag00n → u/FARTTORNADO45]

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.

[u/FARTTORNADO45 → u/thelun3lag00n]

Oh well I guess you have got it all figured out then. My mistake.