This is just one more facet of the general incompetence of South African government employees, this just hit headlines due to the novelty of it having AI as a component of said incompetence.
If this happened in the US or Europe it would be an interesting story. In South Africa, this is just par for the course and the quality of the work may not have been any better had it been written by the current people staffing home affairs.
Currently it's happening in reverse in Denmark. People submit complaints to the municipalities about various things and increasingly those complaints are written with the help of AI (~20%). These cases take up a ton of time, because they are so difficult to process, referencing rules and regulations that doesn't exist, mixed in with some that do. These AI written complaints are typically way more complex, and 10 times the pages of a human written one.
This is the tip of the iceberg. For example, the South African government included AI hallucinations in drafting its own AI policy: https://mybroadband.co.za/news/ai/644001-south-african-exper... . Imagine the AI slop in other documents including those that are classified, financial calculations etc.
As a South African, it is well known here (well, amongst the educated) that the vast majority of management level and up government positions are awarded based on who you know rather than what you know.
These people who don't actually do their job properly very rarely get dismissed, at worst, and only after a public debacle, they tend to be shuffled off to some other position in a different department that they're equally unqualified for.
This just one of the many, many, many, symptoms of this general problem.
"Hey use our thing! It's totally going to replace all humans! It's so awesome it can do your job for you!
...
BTW, it hallucinates... Like all the time.. and if you don't fact check our product you're responsible. Not us! We stole all your data to train it, we're making billions and billions of dollars off that theft, but you own all the liability"
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[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 26.6 ms ] threadBut god forbid that there should be any evidence of that in your .....work. You'll be suspended or fired.
Holy god, it looks like someone used AI and were a bit sloppy in their editing!!!! YOU'RE FIRED!
Maybe someday when there's been enough such reports people will shrug like they do about security breaches now.
What will be interesting is to see who does a better job. Corrupt politician by themselves, or the AI they outsource their job to.
Read it first?
These people who don't actually do their job properly very rarely get dismissed, at worst, and only after a public debacle, they tend to be shuffled off to some other position in a different department that they're equally unqualified for.
This just one of the many, many, many, symptoms of this general problem.
...
BTW, it hallucinates... Like all the time.. and if you don't fact check our product you're responsible. Not us! We stole all your data to train it, we're making billions and billions of dollars off that theft, but you own all the liability"