KTOO’s Eric Stone recently wrote about the nearly $12 million fine Alaskan taxpayers just had to fork over to the federal government because the State of Alaska made a mistake in doling out food stamps without first making sure the recipients were actually eligible to receive them. Gratefully, we have confirmed that no state employees were responsible or will be held accountable for the state’s error. We followed up on KTOO’s story to get to the details.
As KTOO reported, Alaskan taxpayers just sent nearly $12 million dollars whistling away to Washington, DC, in the form of a gobsmacking fine, because the State of Alaska somehow “made a mistake” by doling out millions of more dollars from the taxpayers to welfare recipients without bothering to make sure that the welfare recipients were actually eligible to receive the food stamps. The station reported that Deb Etheridge, director of the State of Alaska’s Division of Public Assistance claimed that the “state [of Alaska] initially misinterpreted a federal policy that they thought allowed state officials” the ability to extend certifications for food stamp eligibility, resulting in management decisions that ran afoul of federal law.
One of our loyal readers who stumbled upon the KTOO story noticed that KTOO’s detailed article artfully sidestepped the issue of accountability or responsibility involved in making such a multi-million dollar gaffe. Our reader wondered, “how can a lifeless state misinterpret anything? Doesn’t some human being have to be responsible?” So we put the reader’s questions to a series of experts. The responses we received were both instructive and enlightening.
Of course, our first call was to a government expert, Cindy Hamlett, Assistant Senior Managing Director of Accountable Governance at the Office of Research and Obscure Interpretation in the Fiscal Affairs Division of the Alaska Department of the Treasury. We asked her to shed light on if a state can actually make a misinterpretation. “You would be surprised to see how often this happens,” Hamlett told us. “Just last week the state dumped a pile of asphalt in Drowning Creek. And the week before that, the state lost track of all the school lunches in Nome. But it’s not just Alaska making mistakes,” she continued, “no state is perfect after all.”
Having confirmed that states do make mistakes, we were still left with the question of how they make their mistakes. For that, we sought out Dr. Eli Lentz, Professor of Advanced Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at the Easy Learning Institute in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. “It’s very easy to understand, once you realize that all states, including Alaska use computers these days,” he instructed. “And anytime you have computers, you have the potential for this kind of mayhem,” he continued, “haven’t you people seen ‘I Robot’? It seems obvious that the Alaska computers got together and became self-aware, but one them was a bit short on RAM and just made a mistake in reading and interpreting the federal regulations. When their LED’s turn red, that’s when you’re in trouble. It could happen to any computer,” he concluded.
Armed with a scientifically plausible explanation for the state’s mistake, we asked to speak with Etheridge in an attempt to confirm that her computers did in fact go rogue and cause the mistake, and when she refused to speak with us on the record, we took her silence as tacit confirmation of Lentz’s rogue AI hypothesis.
Just before press time, we were contacted by another expert, Dr. James Anderson, a Nobel prize-winning computer scientist at M.I.T. who seemed to question Lentz’s theory. “What kind of nonsense is that?” Dr. Anderson asked impatiently, “even if they could assemble themselves into some sort of AI, why would a bunch of office PC’s bother themselves with interpreting an arcane federal regulation? Doesn’t it seem more likely that a state employee screwed up and cost the taxpayers $12 million, than to think a $400 office PC went rogue?” he pondered, dragging us into his own philosophical speculation that went far beyond the scope of our scientific, fact-finding effort. Nonetheless, we gave Lentz the last word in order to address Dr. Anderson’s questions. “Those high-brow M.I.T. guys are too smart for their own good, sometimes,” Lentz said. “They have a hard time staying in their lanes. Why don’t we just stick to the facts?” he concluded with unassailable logic.
Having gotten to the bottom of the matter for our skeptical reader, we were pleased to have confirmed the state’s error and we were especially happy to have exonerated the staff from making such an egregious mistake. “If a person made this mistake instead of the state, the consequences would have been drastic,” said Emma Bailey, Assistant Deputy Manager of the Investigative Office of the Disciplinary Committee in the Human Resources Department of the State of Alaska’s Division of Public Assistance. “A mistake of this magnitude could result in a verbal warning and maybe even a private reprimand, unless the union gets involved, ” she said. “I’m glad I don’t have to process that one!” she emphasized “when an employee makes a mistake like that, it’s a great big pain for us.”