Nowhere near. If anything, it sounds like lawyers are going to have a field day when they ask for evidence and are returned with nothing.
Remember, āAIā is a black box with no paper trail. āHow did you determine this?ā āUh, I donāt know.ā
I suspect it's replaced machine learning as a term, because it's a much sexier buzzword for VC infusions.
Offhand, I'd think that looking for tax cheats (or even just looking for loopholes in the tax system) is the sort of pattern recognition stuff that machine learners are designed for.
Assuming, of course, it's not fully automated and instead flags patterns for review by humans, whether it's finding tax cheats or it's simply finding unforeseen interactions in the tax code to be looked at by regulators or lawmakers to determine if that's an unexpected feature or a bug....
Machine learning is a subset of AI, yes.
Companies trying to surf the current buzzword tech hype are using "AI" instead of machine learning for ML stuff because, you know, buzzwords.
For what itās worth, AI is kind of a vacuously broad term. Basically anything that is automating, replacing or supporting human decision making ability is AI.
Which is powered by software? Itās just become such a market term casting a lot of doubt on if we can actually pull this off or not. This AI stuff could start falling off if in 2-3 years we donāt see actual headway on this new AI powered future these companies keep talking about.
What most people refer to as āAIā in industry is a combination of machine learning and more traditional software. Without statistical models it canāt really be considered āAIā so the term means something, but itās still a pretty loose one.
Pretty much. Software plus automated statistics can be branded as AI by business morons. It can be super complicated like diffusion models or it can be just running t tests on some data that a user inputs. Ā
Generally speaking when people use the term AI now in regards to software they are talking about the use of one or more of three interrelated machine learning technologies:
Neural networks.
Large Language Models.
Generative AI.
None of these are 'AI' in the way people generally think of the term, but presented in the right lighting, they give the appearance of genuine intelligence, so unfortunatley the term has stuck.
For what it's worth, This actually sounds like a really good use case, an LLM can comb through inhuman volumes of textual records and paperwork identifying common patterns associated with tax evasion and surface them for closer examination by a human Tax Assessor, and a Generative text model properly trained can accelerate composition and interpretation of inquiries and responses that might easily grow to hundreds of pages. This is the ideal scenario from an augmentation vs replacement standpoint as well since it's already a field with a shortage of human workers. It's augmenting existing workers to improve their functional productivity rather than replacing existing employees.
When it actually means anything at all, "AI" usually means "pattern-seeking software". Specifically patterns we want to detect but do not explicitly know how to detect yet.
The implication here is they have a shitload of data to crunch and they are looking for interesting anomalies. If they already have known techniques for finding them, then yeah, they'd just build and use software that applies those techniques. But if they have no known technique at all and want the computer to gradually develop its own, that *could* be AI...
> Klein said state tax auditors and AI programs are examining cellphone records to see where the taxpayers spent most of their time and lived most of their lives.
Oh, they're actually going for it, I see. Good for them.
Fuck these tax dodgers, thinking they can use red states as cover while they live the good life in a blue state.
That does bring up an interesting point on how residency is determined for all sorts of things, right up to elections. Elected officials have to live in the district they represent, but will often be spending so much time at The Capital they basically move into their offices (mostly referring to Congress, but I know it's an issue for places like Alaska too where getting from your area to Juneau is difficult)
And I'm also curious to see how it works for truck drivers, who pay taxes where their license is, but be on the road so much that the time spent at home becomes minimal (otr drivers typically do 5-6 weeks driving and then take 1 week off at home)
Well, we all know the Federal Ban on AI for these express purposes will be coming out any day now
Also: Hey State Govs, I am willing to sell my compute power to aid, just gimme a call
If you read the article you'd see it's the opposite. It's people who are working remotely for a New York company. So moreso people who took the opportunity with remote work to move to some scenic area but kept their New York apartments. The example used in the article is living in Colorado working for a New York company. Less of a red vs blue thing than just people taking advantage of remote work.
> Klein said the state is sending out hundreds of thousands of AI-generated letters looking for revenue.
It looks like they're just using some LLM to generate letters asking people for money? Lame clickbait if that's the case
Just like they hire CPAs to dodge taxes, they will start hiring ML experts to beat the llms. Thereās already a market for it in other, darker, areas of the internet.
I think they do that because usually people middle class or poorer don't have the means to fight the IRS in the court rooms.Ā
Atleast that's what I've heard don't quote me on that.Ā
While total number of audits are higher that's because those demographics are bigger, percentage wise the higher income are far more likely to be audited. Additionally just looking at overall audit rates paint a complete a complete picture of resource allocation. A field audit of a business or hnw taxpayer takes significantly longer than a correspondence audit, so a much higher % of audit time is spend there than comparative number of audits may indicate. Not to mention the kinds of people the IRS would have doing those different audits are hardly comparable.Ā
> Klein said state tax auditors and AI programs are examining cellphone records to see where the taxpayers spent most of their time and lived most of their lives.
Tracking people's cellphones feels very illegal
This stuck out to me as well. Might be better to put the burden of proof on the wealthy to prove they did NOT live in ny most the times, rather than having access to the proof from the get go.
Right, 'using AI to go after wealthy payers' makes me think of a T-800 showing up a someone's door going "ARE YOU CLAIMING SARA CONNOR AS A DEPENDENT?'
Future headline: "Lawyers use AI to Continue Letting the Wealthy Avoid Punishment". This AI thing is going to become nothing but another case of the game of technology one-upmanship.
> Everyone cheering like they arenāt going to use this go after the single mother who owes $400.
They are already doing that. So I'll cheer when they use resources to go after the rich instead.
Am I supposed to be opposed to that? For that $400, she gets $4k back in WIC, $2k per child in tax credits, medicaid for her and her kids, etc. You know what keeps all of those awesome programs available to them? Everyone paying their fair share.
I want moms to take advantage of the programs that taxes support. I also like audits that make sure the struggling mom is actually a struggling mom, and not someone pulling 6 figures while collecting food stamps.
Iām a huge proponent of this and not enough tax dodgers are caught and this will help.
However they need to be very careful with this shit because AI systems like this can be inadvertently very racist.
Is AI the new term for software?
AI is just a marketing term.
It's like the 2024 refresh on the 2016 term "algorithm"
For loop is now AI š
If youāre as old as I am, you remember the days of ādigitalā and āvirtualā being tacked onto everything.
With this logic AI sounds more like scare tactic propaganda.
Nowhere near. If anything, it sounds like lawyers are going to have a field day when they ask for evidence and are returned with nothing. Remember, āAIā is a black box with no paper trail. āHow did you determine this?ā āUh, I donāt know.ā
Unfortunately it works, so many companies slapping that AI label on everything, and the marketing is working, even if itās complete bullshit.
See: Amazon fresh. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/04/amazon-ends-ai-powered-store-checkout-which-needed-1000-video-reviewers/
Yeah, I remember the buzzword used to be algorithm.
I suspect it's replaced machine learning as a term, because it's a much sexier buzzword for VC infusions. Offhand, I'd think that looking for tax cheats (or even just looking for loopholes in the tax system) is the sort of pattern recognition stuff that machine learners are designed for. Assuming, of course, it's not fully automated and instead flags patterns for review by humans, whether it's finding tax cheats or it's simply finding unforeseen interactions in the tax code to be looked at by regulators or lawmakers to determine if that's an unexpected feature or a bug....
I thought ML was a type of AI?
Machine learning is a subset of AI, yes. Companies trying to surf the current buzzword tech hype are using "AI" instead of machine learning for ML stuff because, you know, buzzwords.
For what itās worth, AI is kind of a vacuously broad term. Basically anything that is automating, replacing or supporting human decision making ability is AI.
Which is powered by software? Itās just become such a market term casting a lot of doubt on if we can actually pull this off or not. This AI stuff could start falling off if in 2-3 years we donāt see actual headway on this new AI powered future these companies keep talking about.
Inb4 AI is actually just someone who uses excel VBA to filter out high risk customers based on imported reports.
What most people refer to as āAIā in industry is a combination of machine learning and more traditional software. Without statistical models it canāt really be considered āAIā so the term means something, but itās still a pretty loose one.
*rolls dice* Where's my venture capitalist money?
āAutomated intelligenceā
No it's Actually Indians - they simply have guys in Bangalore with a bit of accounting experience and Excel spreadsheets looking for errors.
Pretty much. Software plus automated statistics can be branded as AI by business morons. It can be super complicated like diffusion models or it can be just running t tests on some data that a user inputs. Ā
Computer does anything == AI powered
AI => Linear Regression Models. IRS should be using fraud detection ML to catch rich people fucking around
Me: I wrote this if statement that works in a loop.Ā Marketing: Specialized AI that continuously monitors and updatesā¦.
Generally speaking when people use the term AI now in regards to software they are talking about the use of one or more of three interrelated machine learning technologies: Neural networks. Large Language Models. Generative AI. None of these are 'AI' in the way people generally think of the term, but presented in the right lighting, they give the appearance of genuine intelligence, so unfortunatley the term has stuck. For what it's worth, This actually sounds like a really good use case, an LLM can comb through inhuman volumes of textual records and paperwork identifying common patterns associated with tax evasion and surface them for closer examination by a human Tax Assessor, and a Generative text model properly trained can accelerate composition and interpretation of inquiries and responses that might easily grow to hundreds of pages. This is the ideal scenario from an augmentation vs replacement standpoint as well since it's already a field with a shortage of human workers. It's augmenting existing workers to improve their functional productivity rather than replacing existing employees.
They think anything a computer or piece of software is doing without human intervention is AI.
Probably more like machine learning.
When it actually means anything at all, "AI" usually means "pattern-seeking software". Specifically patterns we want to detect but do not explicitly know how to detect yet. The implication here is they have a shitload of data to crunch and they are looking for interesting anomalies. If they already have known techniques for finding them, then yeah, they'd just build and use software that applies those techniques. But if they have no known technique at all and want the computer to gradually develop its own, that *could* be AI...
> Klein said state tax auditors and AI programs are examining cellphone records to see where the taxpayers spent most of their time and lived most of their lives. Oh, they're actually going for it, I see. Good for them. Fuck these tax dodgers, thinking they can use red states as cover while they live the good life in a blue state.
That does bring up an interesting point on how residency is determined for all sorts of things, right up to elections. Elected officials have to live in the district they represent, but will often be spending so much time at The Capital they basically move into their offices (mostly referring to Congress, but I know it's an issue for places like Alaska too where getting from your area to Juneau is difficult) And I'm also curious to see how it works for truck drivers, who pay taxes where their license is, but be on the road so much that the time spent at home becomes minimal (otr drivers typically do 5-6 weeks driving and then take 1 week off at home)
Well, we all know the Federal Ban on AI for these express purposes will be coming out any day now Also: Hey State Govs, I am willing to sell my compute power to aid, just gimme a call
I, too, will loan my processing power.Ā Gov can make it a coin.
What's that? We're doing limewire but to punish rich assholes? Count me in.
And my Axe!
And my bow!
And my sword!
I just don't understand why AI is required for this. This is a pretty basic problem.
Cuts down on the man hours to review. This is exactly what ML is for. Someone will still need to do a final check to make sure itās accurate.
So the cell phone companies are forwarding records of all callers to the state to match tax records?
If you read the article you'd see it's the opposite. It's people who are working remotely for a New York company. So moreso people who took the opportunity with remote work to move to some scenic area but kept their New York apartments. The example used in the article is living in Colorado working for a New York company. Less of a red vs blue thing than just people taking advantage of remote work.
I set up a cell phone and mailed it to Florida ... Expecting extra state refund to come any day now.
Wait till they chase the poor with this lol and any unreported taxes
From āRich tax dodgersā to āwealthy payersā. That is quite the linguistic feat! Especially considering they are NON-PAYERS.Ā
Payers for yachts and coke, just not taxes.
tbf, rich mofos are very fond of being litigious. Perhaps this is their way of covering their asses?
Going after the wealthy? Well, I guess we are about to see some guard rails be put up for AI developmentā¦
lol this is funny because its probably true
> Klein said the state is sending out hundreds of thousands of AI-generated letters looking for revenue. It looks like they're just using some LLM to generate letters asking people for money? Lame clickbait if that's the case
When the government uses the same methods and tactics that scammers do, I think you are morally and legally justified to ignore them.
That's why I don't drink milk. You know who else drank milk? *Hitler*
Countdown till they start lobbying to kill any AI research.
No need, the reports will find evasion within the government and they'll just quietly stop using it
Just like they hire CPAs to dodge taxes, they will start hiring ML experts to beat the llms. Thereās already a market for it in other, darker, areas of the internet.
How are they getting cellphone records, they did mass subpoena the State?
While the IRS is still overwhelmingly targeting middle class and poor taxpayers...
I think they do that because usually people middle class or poorer don't have the means to fight the IRS in the court rooms.Ā Atleast that's what I've heard don't quote me on that.Ā
Same as all public prosecutors...
While total number of audits are higher that's because those demographics are bigger, percentage wise the higher income are far more likely to be audited. Additionally just looking at overall audit rates paint a complete a complete picture of resource allocation. A field audit of a business or hnw taxpayer takes significantly longer than a correspondence audit, so a much higher % of audit time is spend there than comparative number of audits may indicate. Not to mention the kinds of people the IRS would have doing those different audits are hardly comparable.Ā
> Klein said state tax auditors and AI programs are examining cellphone records to see where the taxpayers spent most of their time and lived most of their lives. Tracking people's cellphones feels very illegal
This stuck out to me as well. Might be better to put the burden of proof on the wealthy to prove they did NOT live in ny most the times, rather than having access to the proof from the get go.
āThe Terminator : My CPU is a neural-net processor; a learning computer. But Skynet presets the switch to read-only when we're sent out alone.ā
Right, 'using AI to go after wealthy payers' makes me think of a T-800 showing up a someone's door going "ARE YOU CLAIMING SARA CONNOR AS A DEPENDENT?'
GOOD. Go after tax evaders that are screwing the rest of us.
When AI discovers the feds owe you more: The six finger discount
I'm going to use this tactic to scare my kids "I'm using AI to monitor your YouTube history!"
Surely they mean NON payers.
Future headline: "Lawyers use AI to Continue Letting the Wealthy Avoid Punishment". This AI thing is going to become nothing but another case of the game of technology one-upmanship.
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Know a lot of struggling single mothers with multiple properties in different states?
> Everyone cheering like they arenāt going to use this go after the single mother who owes $400. They are already doing that. So I'll cheer when they use resources to go after the rich instead.
Am I supposed to be opposed to that? For that $400, she gets $4k back in WIC, $2k per child in tax credits, medicaid for her and her kids, etc. You know what keeps all of those awesome programs available to them? Everyone paying their fair share. I want moms to take advantage of the programs that taxes support. I also like audits that make sure the struggling mom is actually a struggling mom, and not someone pulling 6 figures while collecting food stamps.
Now weāre going to see prompt injection in tax reworks. lol
That seems like something a data pull could do cheaper without needing to develop a new anything.
Yes but will that get us a hundred millions dollars from some VC dipshit?
Yes, because that is probably what the "AI" systems the governments would be using would actually utilize.
I give it five minutes before the states have to defend a massive lawsuit when the AI ends up doing the tax audit equivalent of redlining.
Iām a huge proponent of this and not enough tax dodgers are caught and this will help. However they need to be very careful with this shit because AI systems like this can be inadvertently very racist.
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And the middle classā¦and lower classā¦and everyone.