Generative AI has come a long way, but hallucinations are still the order of the day. And the AI prefers to invent an answer rather than say it doesn’t know something. Those of us who use it often know that we cannot trust it 100% and we always have to do checks. At Deloitte they didn’t think checking was important and now they have to return almost $300,000 to the Australian government.
What has happened? The Australian government’s employment department commissioned a report from consulting firm Deloitte. It was published last July and everything was going well until, as they say in APa University of Sydney researcher alerted the media that the report was riddled with erroneous references, including a fabricated quote from a court ruling and references to studies that did not exist. The company withdrew it and a revised version was released.
Why is it important. The consulting industry is a multi-billion dollar business (it is estimated that by 2024 it will generate a whopping 354 billion dollars) and, due to its very essence and way of operating, it is one of the sectors vulnerable to “replacement by AI”. AI is already a technology widely used in the sector for tasks like big data analysis, report generation o presentations and other administrative tasks. The Deloitte case is a good example of this, but it shows that human supervision is necessary. We will probably encounter more such cases in the future.
Consequences. The government paid almost $300,000 to Deloitte for preparing the report, so the firm must partially return the amount. However, Barbara Pocock, Senator of the Green Partybelieves they should return the full amount: “Deloitte misused AI: they misquoted a judge and used non-existent references (…) These are the kind of things a first-year college student would get into a lot of trouble for.”
Dissimulate, it has not been noticed. Chris Rudge, the researcher who discovered the cake, says the document contained at least 20 errors, including a reference to a book written by someone he knew that did not exist. Perhaps the most serious of all is that he quotes a completely invented phrase from a judge. Despite this being such an obvious case, Deloitte has not admitted that the errors are generated by the use of AI and has limited itself to commenting that “the matter has been resolved directly with the client.”
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