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Comment by toomuchtodo

4 hours ago

Lawsuit Says UnitedHealth Used AI With a 90% Error Rate to Deny Care - https://litigationtracker.law.georgetown.edu/wp-content/uplo...

that smells like bullshit to be fair. if you have a system that makes errors over 90% of the time then you have a system you can leverage to make fewer errors.

the situation would have to be very particular/contrived for that not to be the case.

  • > if you have a system that makes errors over 90% of the time then you have a system you can leverage to make fewer errors.

    Sure if you're flipping a coin.

    If you're calculating a number from 1 to 100 then depending on distribution a calculation that's wrong 90% of the time is probably useless.

  • What if you want errors to happen, e.g. deny care, bomb civilians; in that case 90% error rate is what you want, and plausible deniably so!

  • It sounds like something with a 90% error rate would be better to just do the opposite of what was determined and suddenly have a 10% error rate??

  • Nah, it's cumulative errors per claim. E.g. maybe the per-decision-factor rate is somewhere over 50% but overall most claims will have errors because so many factors go into coverage/reimbursement decisions.

  • > the situation would have to be very particular

    The situation is very particular. When the system makes an error, I make a bigger profit. If the system made fewer errors, it would approve more things that cost me money.

    Why do you think I'm motivated to make fewer errors under that situation?

  • What makes you think they are financially motivated to make fewer "errors" (improper denial of care while keeping premiums)?