RE: “The robots work at night”: How AI helps the world’s poorest, and where it falls short

Last updated 1 minute ago This is a reply to one of GiveDirectly's blog posts, and also the accompanying video. I'd advise you read and/or watch before you engage with this1. The tl;dr of this piece is pretty simple: putting AI tools in the hands of the world's poorest, to ask questions such as “How to make a profit in three months?”, “What is the number of neighbors I should be cautious about?” and “My child is in trouble, what should I do?” (real questions from the blog post!) instead of just directly giving them more money (the raison d'etre of a group called GiveDirectly you'd assume!) is misguided at best and harrowingly awful at worst. GiveDirectly says it gave users education on the tools they were using. I can also be charitable and say that these are mostly idle questions, questions to see what the robot thinks, not to be taken wholesale as The Answer. However, rampant misinformation/"hallucinations", gaps in the data covering their villages and lives and context, and the way…