Bots v bots and public v private

Rob Reich, political scientist at Stanford, and colleagues Mehran Sahami and Jeremy Weinstein teach a class on ethics in computer science. One example they use in class is of an app fights parking tickets. A pretty basic AI system, the app helps drivers submit an appeal to the ticketing city. Lots of jurisdictions make "showing up for the hearing" the key moment of jurisprudence - hearings only occur if the driver goes through the hassle of appealing. For drivers, it's a matter of filing an appeak and attending just one hearing. For the cops who write the tickets, they may be part of dozens or more hearings each year, depending on how many tickets are issued and appealed. The appeals process is annoying enough that most drivers will just pay a ticket. But if they use the app to file their appeal, the work load shifts from the driver (who still must show up to the hearing) to the cop who issued the ticket. 

The app helps a lot of folks get out of parking tickets. 

                                                        Photo by Waldemar on Unsplash 

Parking tickets are a public good problem. They are a way for cities to enforce parking rules, which one can hope are developed with an eye toward spreading the benefits of available space across the greatest number and type of users (drivers, store owners, pedestrians, shoppers, trucks making deliveries, etc). There is a public good involved - following the rules and paying into the shared pot (the fees to the city) when you don't. 

So using the parking ticket app is not only a but of a cheat, it's a cheating of the public good for the benefit of a driver with a smart phone who wants to break the rules and not pay. Not a lot of sympathy for this app from the professors. 

Today, I learned of a new app, that couldn't be a more timely twist on the conundrum of the parking ticket app. It's name gives it away - FightHealthInsurance.com. It's a website where you can file appeals when your insurance company (to whom you pay premiums, and co-pays, and out of pocket expenses, and co-insurance) refuses to pay for a procedure or pharmaceutical that your doctor has prescribed. 

There's lots of private goods in here. Have you ever appealed to your insurance company? Its a pain, everyone apologizes, no one knows or will tell why things are being rejected, it pits people who are not medical doctors against systems filled with them, it can involve days on the phone, and - in the clearest sign they don't want you to do this - it requires faxing forms. The website uses your rejection letter and your insurance plan documentation to argue that the procedure should be covered - it's designed to help the individual. The individual who is already sick or they wouldn't be in this mess, who is paying the insurance company so it will cover medical expenses. The goal is to get coverage from the insurance provider. In the USA that insurance provider is a commercial company. Unlike the parking app, there is no role here for the public treasury, it's people versus insurance companies. 

So, if the private individual wins their appeal and the insurance company loses, do we care? It's one tiny hit to their massive profits. We know the insurance companies use AI to deny their customers the very product they pay for.  I find it hard to feel bad for the customer tossing a little AI right back at the company. 

Is it fair? I'm sorry, have you not been paying attention? Nothing in the US is fair; certainly nothing related to insurance. 

Is it fair that down the road this might raise insurance rates for other people? Really? The companies raise their rates every year for pure profit motives, what makes you think they would stop just because they had to honor a few claims they tried to reject? If its an AI v AI battle, and a person v a company, my preference is for the person's AI to beat the company's AI. For one thing, you can bet the company has the resources to keep finessing its AI to not get beat, whereas the person is sick, tired, and wrestling with paperwork. For a product they already paid for (insurance). 

If more AI were tilted toward helping the little guy, I'd love AI a little more than I do (which is to say, I don't, because it's built by and for, centralized power).

TL;DR - we're about to live in a world where my bot fights company bots. This will be called the age of AI Agents. #Nonprofits - it results in bots v bots, do not engage, do not participate, step away from the computer keyboard and the bright shiny thing.

How we receive now

In the fall of 2021 my book, How We Give Now, was published. Shortly thereafter I got covid, which turned into Long Covid. I've now been disabled since early 2022. I didn't get to tour with the book, missed out on lots of opportunities to share it with people, and had no chance to promote it. That's sad, but hey, life gives you lemons. 

I feel as if I've spent the time since getting sick in 2022 learning how to receive. To really rely on others, to depend on family and close friends for just about everything. And to be delighted by less-close friends who turn out to know when to come by, know how to be helpful, know how to just sit and be quiet together. Friends who will drive across town, load up me and my wheelchair, take me to a park (or to the ocean), sit there with me, then bring me back. Friends who bring food. Friends who bring blankets. Family that flies across country to help out. Family friends who come specifically to give my wife a break. People who walk the dog. It's a long list of acts, for each of which I am eternally grateful.

I'm not going to write a book called How We Receive Now, but I encourage you to think about both how you give and how you receive. Both are good to be good at. 

This year I was thrilled to join two book groups. This was a nudge to learn how to listen to audiobooks - as it's become very hard on my brain to read screens or books.  I'll never be good at citing audiobooks, but they sure help me "read" faster.

In one of the book groups, I am the youngest member by at least 16 years. Most of the members are at least 20 years older than I am. In the other, which admittedly is just me and one of my niblings, I am 35 years older than the other member. The first group reads mostly fiction with an occasional memoir (so far, one has been of a psychotherapist and the other of a psychic). The second group is alternating fiction with nonfiction politics. 

I threw an idea around earlier this year with some other philanthropy wonks - starting a zoom reading group of books on philanthropy. If you're interested in doing that let me know in the comments or at @p2173.bsky.social.

Blueprint 2025 includes a subset of the following list. Below are the (Non-Academic) books I've finished so far this year - will probably get a few more in and will then update. The Blueprint goes live on January 15, 2025.

Marking the baseline

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

That's the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. It guarantees me, a US born and raised, tax-paying, civic minded citizen the right to speak and to gather. Under the interpretation of these rights that has held for 248 years and all 61 of the years I've lived so far, I can loudly and repeatedly criticize my government, the people in it, and those leading it. I can do this in the park, on the street, on the internet. I can do it without fear of being arrested or locked up by the government that I criticize. As long as I have not made any actionable threats, I can criticize, ridicule, satirize, and mock all day, every day. 

                                            Photo by Maurits Bausenhart from Unsplash

This is a baseline assertion of this particular right - the right of free expression. 

I am putting it here because I fully expect us - Americans - to slip and slide away from this baseline over the next few years. To slowly be convinced that there are more limits on this right than there are, or that the right means things it doesn't (such as applying to private businesses. Or that your right to speak implies I need to listen (Nope)). To be told or have it strongly implied that one should be quiet. We will slip from this baseline, toward a much more limited - and white man privileging - definition of this right. 

We will start to censor ourselves. Major institutions - from foundations to universities - are already doing this. DEI statements are disappearing from websites and brochures. (The flimsiness of these commitments is evident in the speed with which institutions are ditching them).

Those who speak up will be subjected to on/offline harassment. Doxxing. Mobs and fear have become "expected" responses to those who speak against the incoming president and his allies. His allies now include the leaders/owners of the platforms we rely on to communicate with each other and to gather (or plan gatherings).

Mark this baseline. Mark your own behavior. If you believe, as I do, that we should not give in to the demands of a wanna be dictator if we want to keep our democracy, then exercise your right to free speech. 

I am putting this out there so you keep your eyes on me. In case anything happens to me. Because I intend to keep speaking out, to keep criticizing and mocking. To keep moving toward a multiracial democracy that enables all of us to do all we can to save out planet. Not to live in an oligarch-owned autocracy hell bent on grabhing as much power as they can, as quickly as they can, and with no intention of letting it go. I'm not giving them any of my power. And, if they shut me up for what I'm saying, you will know that we have lost our first amendment rights and the slide away from democracy has accelerated.

No anticipatory obedience

  Illustration by Aarón Blanco Tejedor

The popular vote differential between the Democratic and Republican candidates for US President was 1.7%. 49.9 percent of voters put a tyrant in the White House; 48.3 percent lost. The incoming administration (it does not have power, yet) is continuing the vitriolic hateful attacks on immigrants and transgender people that it believes won it the election. 

And, last week I was made aware of just how quickly people cave. People who would tell you they'd have acted differently in late 1930s Germany, or during other periods of generalized terror, fingerpointing, othering. People who think they're activists, who think of themselves as fighting for justice. 

A little background: A U.S. Congressional representative is trying to make a name for herself by writing a law directed at the first - and so far, only - out transgender member of Congress. Despite a prohibition on writing laws that single out people or enterprises, the House passed her law forbidding the use of Congressional women's bathrooms by transgender women. Two other Representatives stood up quickly and said, "Here, use this bathroom, and let's get on with doing real work." The Representative targeted by the bill said the same thing, "not here to fight about bathrooms, here to do real work" for the people she represents. 

Two weeks ago, this happened: The Representative who wrote the law was on a panel talking tech policy. The room was full of people - probably people from a number of organizations that work for a free and fair internet, net neutrality, low cost broadband, etc. Probably organizations that have DEI programs and inclusivity statements and nonharrasment policies. Part way through the panel, an acquaintance of mine stood up and asked the room 

"Are you fighting for a fair internet, or are you working for big tech? Technology will either be a force for justice, liberation and resistance to authoritarianism, or it will be a tool for the automation of tyranny, exploitation and greed. I know which side I’m on. I’m asking other tech advocates to figure out where they stand." 

They had with them a trans pride flag. They were immediately approached by security and removed from the room. But their questions lingered.

Let's be clear. They were not addressing the stage or the Representative. They were addressing the room. The tech policy wonks. The activists. From organizations you and I may have supported in the past. And NONE of the people in that room stood with my acquaintance. NONE of the other attendees left the room when they did. NO ONE stood with them. 

This is heartbreaking. And awful. And scary. 

The first rule of fighting authoritarianism is DO NOT OBEY IN ADVANCE. No anticipatory obedience. (See Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, and every other book written about authoritarianism.)  

Another good rule (not from Snyder, from me) is to READ YOUR OPPONENT'S PLANS WHEN THEY PUBLISH THEM. Project 2025. And this synthesis across right wing groups to wipe out progressive civil society.

I bet if I were to ask, the people in that room (or, extrapolating from the election results, 1/2 of the people in that room) would tell you they fight for justice. That they were there in opposition to the Representative. That they care about an internet for all. Well, I can tell you this from watching what happened in that room. When the moment mattered, they didn't. Not 1/2 the room. Not one person.

Standing up for what's right when it's easy is easy. Standing up for what's right when it's hard, and scary, and dangerous? That's what protecting democracy and fighting for our rights takes now.

That room failed. That's terrifying.

This scares me. Scarier than the rhetoric and threats of the incoming Administration is the thought that people I hope will have my back, won't. That 48.3 percent of the country will take the electoral loss and give up, or only focus on the next election, or decide some people, some issues can be sacrificed. 

What would you have done? Really? I hope each of us will prepare to fight, safely and effectively, at big moments and small ones. This Administration has made it clear what it wants to do. We who it targets must take care of ourselves and stand with each other. Real allies will also stand.