They know it doesn’t work this is just a cash grab by rental car companies hoping to squeeze extra profit knowing most people won’t fight it under the guise of digital transformation.
“AI is a disaster.” Fixed it for you.
Never rent a car from Hertz, check.
Hertz has also called the cops on their customers for a variety of asinine reasons.
I steer clear of them and Enterprise (Enterprise has been working the whole shaft for ICE).
I get why they’d use something like this to save money and time but, is suspect that correct use would include a human check before charging people.
We need to start pushing for laws on this kind of thing. Automated checks are fine if you, as the company, trust they won’t have too many false negatives. If you aren’t checking for false positives, though, you should be heavily fined for each false report. $25,000 per false report sounds like a good place to start. Hopefully that would be large enough to not just be the cost of doing business.
Oh, so Hertz has gotten wise to… every online platform that exists: Outsourcing all responsibility for their user-hostile bullshit to some vague “system” that cannot be held accountable.
I’m so sorry but the advertised cost has doubled because… Computer says so! No, sir, there’s nothing I can do, sir, you see it’s the system.
And you can’t go anywhere else, because everyone else is doing it (or soon will be) too!
I once tried to book on their site, and the website froze and it wouldn’t go through every time I tried to pay. I checked my email multiple times and checked my credit card statement. Nothing went through. I went and booked elsewhere. 12 hours later, I get a confirmation email from them. I tried to cancel and it wanted to charge me $100 cancelation fee. I had to call to get it resolved. 45 minute wait time. Thankfully they took care of it, but it was a huge headache caused by their shitty system.
Oh, this is a thing. It’s called an accountability sink.
There is a really interesting book called the unaccountability machine by Rory Sutherland (if my memory is working). Worth a read
Rory “expert in all things” Sutherland?
He keeps cropping up in my youtube feed talking about a huge range of topics in his confident posh twat voice.
His background is in marketing… never trust a salesman
Thanks! I knew there was a term, but just couldn’t conjure it.
just wait till they start denying health insurance with it
I’m sorry ma’am I know you’re upset, but the AI said it’s not covered. The AI is numbers, and numbers don’t lie.
United Health is way ahead of you. 1000 use cases, they tout. it’s one of the things that lead to the luigi-ing.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/unitedhealth-now-has-1-000-ai-use-cases-including-in-claims-f3387ca3
Do they already not do that? They just call it “the computer”.
I mean, it’ll mostly be accelerating a trend that was already there. Also, the initial scramble to use the legal grey area to cover as much shady shit as possible in a: Well shucks, how were we supposed to know the neural net would make illegal denials? After all, the guys who trained it don’t even know exactly why it does what it does kinda way
I think it’s generally a brilliant solution but there are a couple of problems here:
- The scanner seems to flag fucking everything and charge for minor damage where a human would probably flag it as wear.
- No one is allowed to correct the scanner:
Perturbed by the apparent mistake, the user tried to speak to employees and managers at the Hertz counter, but none were able to help, and all “pointed fingers at the ‘AI scanner.’” They were told to contact customer support — but even that proved futile after representatives claimed they “can’t do anything.”
Sounds to me like they’re just trying to replace those employees. That’s why they won’t let them interfere.
The US lacks even the most basic consumer protections it seems.
In Australia, companies still try to give you the run around, but I am extremely confident this wouldn’t fly here. Even though I’m not a lawyer.
If you literally can’t get a hold of them, they’re breaking Australian Consumer Law, that’s a slam dunk to charge back the card and dare them to take you to your state’s relevant tribunal that hears cases like this. It costs either like $70 to file, you can represent yourself easily, and if you’re low-income, it’s literally free.
They don’t want to waste money on fighting you. If you’re confident you’re clearly in the right, it’s very easy to get a company to back down.
This is a great time to remind everyone to take photos before and after getting a rental car, because otherwise it’s your word against them.
Sounds like they want to lose those customers.
Companies have been fucking consumers since the beginning of time and consumers, time and time again, bend over and ask for more. Just look at all of the most successful companies in the world and ask yourself, are they constantly trying to deliver the most amazing service possible for their customers or are they trying to find new ways to fuck them at every available opportunity?
I feel like the go to strategy would be to offer incredible service at first, then once you are big enough to force out competitors and the like, then you start fucking the consumer
The word used for that strategy is usually “enshittification”. It happens a lot after digital tech is introduced in a new sector.
Not many people today remember when Google was actually useful. Once upon a time.
From “don’t be evil” to “be as evil as possible”
But they know their competitions are doing to adopt the same type of tech, so where are those customers going to go when they have no choice?
Sometimes there’s no competition. Many times there is. And still customers will ignore them.
Look where we all are right now. Was it hard leaving Reddit? Did it cost you anything? And yet millions of people return there every day. Reddit fucked them, they protested for 2 days, and then almost everyone went back to business as usual.
I use an app called GoMore in some places in Europe that allows you to rent cars from other peers. The rental process is cheaper and faster–everything is done through the app–and you avoid these shady corpo practices.
For now till the shit that happens with Airbnb happens there. With the corporations just renting all the cars.
Turo is probably the closest equivalent in the US
In the US, Turo is basically that.
That’s why the matching strategy is mergers to combine all the competitors into one company.
good, tbh
I’m not sure how you can make the points you make, and still call it a “generally brilliant solution”
The entire point of this system - like anything a giant company like Hertz does - is not to be fair to the customer. The point is to screw the customer over to make money.
Not allowing human employees to challenge the incorrect AI decision is very intentional, because it defers your complaint to a later time when you have to phone customer support.
This means you no longer have the persuasion power of being there in person at the time of the assessment, with the car still there too, and means you have to muster the time and effort to call customer services - which they are hoping you won’t bother doing. Even if you do call, CS hold all the cards at that point and can easily swerve you over the phone.
It’s all part of the business strategy.
That’s why you chargeback. Don’t waste time arguing with the machine, cut it off at the cashflow
I’m not sure how you can make the points you make, and still call it a “generally brilliant solution”
Because the technology itself is not the problem, it’s the application. Not complicated.
The technology is literally the problem as it’s not working
It works as Hertz intended. And that’s the problem.
There’s literally nothing wrong with the technology. The problem is the application.
The technology is NOT DOING WHAT ITS MEANT TO DO - it is IDENTIFYING DAMAGE WHERE THERE IS NONE - the TECHNOLOGY is NOT working as it should
The technology isn’t there to accurately assess damage. It’s there to give Hertz an excuse to charge you extra money. It’s working exactly as the ghouls in the C-suite like.
It’s the guise of customer service sure, yeah
Do you hold everything to such a standard?
Stop lights are meant to direct traffic. If someone runs a red light, is the technology not working as it should?
The technology here, using computer vision to automatically flag potential damage, needed to be implemented alongside human supervision - an employee should be able to walk by the car, see that the flagged damage doesn’t actually exist, and override the algorithm.
The technology itself isn’t bad, it’s how hertz is using it that is.
I believe the unfortunate miscommunication here is that when @Ulrich@feddit.org said the solution was brilliant, they were referring to the technology as the “solution”, and others are referring to the implementation as a whole as the “solution”
Stop light analogy is completely unequivocal
You’re admitting the technology is in fact flawed if you think it needed to be implemented with supervision. An uno reverse is, every set of traffic lights needs a traffic controller to stop drivers running red lights. Unequivocal, right?
Just stop because you’re wrong, lol
The stop light analogy would require the stop light be doing something wrong not the human element doing something wrong because.
There is no human element to this implantation, it is the technology itself malfunctioning. There was no damage but the system thinks there is damage.
I was pretty clear about what I was referring to. The internet is just full of pedants lurking and waiting for their chance to UM ACKSHUALLY their way into a conversation.
Just because THE TECHNOLOGY IS NOT PERFECT does not mean it is NOT DOING WHAT IT’S intended to do. Sorry I’m having trouble controlling THE VOLUME OF MY VOICE.
There’s literally nothing wrong with the technology.
Pick a lane troll
It’s really funny here. There already exists software that does this stuff. It’s existed for quite a while. I personally know a software engineer that works at a company that creates this stuff. It’s sold to insurance companies. Hertz version must just totally suck.
It’s designed to suck.
You are spot on here. AI is great for sensitivity (noticing potential issues), but terrible for specivity (giving many false positives).
The issue is how AI is used, not the AI itself. They don’t have a human in the checking process. They should use AI scanner to check the car. If it’s fine, then you have saved the employee from manually checking, which is a time-consuming process and prone to error.
If the AI spots something, then get an employee to look at the issues highlighted. If it’s just a water drop or other false positive, then it should be a one click ‘ignore’, and the customer goes on their way without charge. If it is genuine, then show the evidence to the customer and discuss charges in person. Company still saves time over a manual check and has much improved accuracy and evidence collection.
They are being greedy by trying to eliminate the employee altogether. This probably doesn’t actually save any money, if anything it costs more in dealing with complaints, not to mention the loss of sales due to building a poor image.
AI is great for sensitivity (noticing potential issues), but terrible for specivity (giving many false positives).
AI is not uniqely prone to false positives; in this case, it’s being used deliberately to produce them.
If it’s fine, then you have saved the employee from manually checking
Exactly. Not only that but the human is more likely to overlook some things. It also creates a digital record of the complete condition.
Have the AI go over the vehicle, being insanely meticulous and then pass that info off to a human who verifies any flagged damages in a couple of seconds and makes decisions about what needs to be charged.
Combining the 2 improves efficiency and accuracy.
Sounds like that shit with dodgy smoking detection in a hotel from last week…
Those do exactly what they’re supposed to do. They’re even explicitly advertised as providing new revenue streams.
Yup intentionally using dogy tools to extract more money from people under false pretenses, at this point I’m boycotting any company that claims to use AI, fuck em all
Good luck trying to boycott a car rental company, as far as I can tell they are all actually the same company with 5 different “brands”. You rent from one but when you show up they send you to another one who has the car. It’s crazy.
Use Turo. You can rent basic or fun/interesting cars directly from the owners.
Oh yay another bullshit thing. No thanks.
It’s been around for quite awhile. I use Turo more than I use regular car rental services because you actually get to choose what car you’re getting and the prices are better.
I wonder what a credit card dispute would result in here. Underutilized feature when businesses pull shady shit. Think I’ve had 6 or so disputes over the years, never failed.
Too many people these days don’t use or have access to credit cards for services like this. Many people I know only use bank debit cards, or worse, use the debit preloaded cash cards issued by their employers’ payroll service provider.
Credit cards motivate banks to help you, because if you won’t pay, and the business doesn’t pay, the bank has to take the hit.
Debit cards will work as well if your bank values it’s reputation - but not all banks do.
And I would not trust a preloaded card provider to assist. You are neither their business partner nor their customer and that puts your interests at the bottom of a very long list. You have to hope some law is on your side or that your issue is so trivial that resolving it is more cost effective then dealing with you.
in this case, hertz doesn’t rent to who doesn’t have a credit card
debit = no rent
debit = no rent
Funny, I rented from Hertz about two weeks ago and there was a big sign at the counter explaining their terms of business for renting with a debit card. And it didn’t say “We don’t do it.”
I should have remembered that. I had to lend my card out to my friend who was in a credit lock at the time they needed a rental. Still, I don’t think my advice is invalid, just irrelevant here.
You CAN dispute debit card charges, but the process is typically done through the vendor of the card, CPI or Fiserv. Contact your bank.
Yes. I agree - on paper all three have a chargeback process that appear similar enough. However, assuming you aren’t a financial expert who never needs help, I’m discussing the behind the front politics at play and each group’s motivations to go above and beyond.
Credit cards are also an instrument of christofascist pedophiles who want to ban all pornography and ‘pornography’ (they consider the existence of queer people to be porn)
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Theoretically. Last time i saw an ‘american ecpress’ card was like 2013.
Huh? I don’t think I’ve ever used a rental car service that didn’t require a credit card. Exactly so they can charge for this sort of thing.
Virtually any place that accepts a credit card will accept debit cards, too. Actually, most debit cards can be processed as credit cards. The comment you responded to simply highlighted that this trick is much easier to pull with credit card than a debit card, as the creditor hasn’t yet been repaid for the credit issued.
it’s because with credit cards they can check the credit limit, then be sure that the card can pay the insurance deductible in case of crash
instead with debit i can rent a car, close or deativate the card, crash/total the rental car and then avoid paying any extra fee
most rentals don’t rent with debit cards because they want to be sure, and who accepts debit:
- they preauthorize thousands of dollars instead of hundreds
- they only rent the lowest end of the available cars
I don’t understand how this works out badly for the person using a debit card. You pay for the vehicle and if they try to make you pay more you ask for proof and if you don’t get it you walk away.
Or do they require a collateral fee when renting?
It’s about who’s lawyers you can rally to your defense in a dispute.
With a credit card you’re spending the bank’s money. If you can convince the bank you’re in the right, it’s you and the bank’s lawyers recovering the bank’s money.
As a debit card user, the banks will support your legal rights, because it’s good business for your clients to prosper. While the bank’s lawyers won’t go to bat for you, many will be willing to give you quasi-legal and quasi-financial tidbits or point you in the right direction.
As the bank’s client’s employee, you’re basically on your own. Good luck.
The other thing not being mentioned is that credit cards and debit cards have different legally required protections.
Or do they require a collateral fee when renting?
Yes
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The term AI itself is a shifting of goalposts. What was AI 50 years ago* is now AGI, so we can call this shit AI though it’s nothing of the sort. And everybody’s falling for the hype: governments, militaries, police forces, care providers, hospitals… not to speak of the insane amounts of energy & resources this wastes, and other highly problematic, erm, problems. What a fucking disaster.
If it wasn’t for those huge caveats I’d be all for it. Use it for what it can do (which isn’t all that much), research it. But don’t fall for the shit some tech bro envisions for us.
* tbf fucking around with that term probably isn’t a new thing either, and science itself is divided on how to define it.
The current situation is a bubble based on an over hyped extension of the cloud compute boom. Nearly a trillion dollars of capital expenditure over the past 5 years from major tech companies chasing down this white whale and filling up new data centers with Nvidia GPUs. With revenue caping out at maybe 45 billion annually across all of them for “AI” products and services, and that’s before even talking about ongoing operation costs such as power for the data centers, wages for people working on them, or the wages of people working to develop services to run on them.
None of this is making any fucking profit, and every attempt to find new revenue ether increases their costs even more or falls flat on its face the moment it is actually shipped. No one wants to call it out at higher levels because NVIDIA is holding up the whole fucking stock market right now, and them crashing out because everyone stoped buying new GPUs will hurt everyone else’s growth narrative.
It’s also the other way around. What was called AI in the past is now called bots. Simple algorithms that approximate the appearance of intelligence like even the earliest chess engines, for instance, were also called AI.
And all those uses are correct, because AI is a broad field. We should just use the more specific terms these days though: machine learning, LLM, Bayesian networks, etc.
Agreed. But most people have neither the time nor capacity to track all of these specifics, so popular discussions of AI-related technologies inevitably break down into a mud pit of people talking past each other about various different topics.
Which, if you think about it, is true of most public discussions about any complex topic. It almost invariably devolves into a miscommunication or a discussion about semantics.
People have the capacity to track genres and whatnot, what’s so different about this?
I think people could understand if explained probably, but unfortunately journalists rarely dive deeply enough to do that. It really doesn’t need to get too involved:
- machine learning - tell an algorithm what it’s allowed to change and what a “good” output is and it’ll handle the rest to find the best solution
- Bayesian networks - probability of an event given a previous event; this is the underpinnings of LLMs
- LLM - similar to Bayesian networks, but with a lot more data
And so on. If people can associate a technology with common applications, it’ll work a lot more like genres and people will start to intuit limitations of various technologies.
What’s different is that most people will see it as “tech stuff” and mentally file it in a drawer with spare extension cords and adapters. They don’t care to deeply study or catalog things. Nerds care about that, and most people here, including me, are nerds, but most people are not nerds and consider learning to be a form of torture.
People writ-large don’t care about proper genre labels either, they just kinda pick a vibe and guess off of it. Look at all the -core suffixed aesthetic names that cropped up in the last decade.
Yeah, I think it’s unfortunate that tech is something people refuse to learn about. I’ve been able to explain technical topics to less technical people, they just need to care.
For example, I’m into finance, and have been able to explain pretty complex topics (compounding, Social Security benefits, derivatives, etc) to people with no background in a way that they know how things work at a high level. They may not be able to trade options or predict portfolio performance, but they can at least tell if their “financial advisor” knows their stuff.
Learning a bit about key technologies can help cut through the BS from marketing departments. But as soon as I mention something remotely technical, people shut down. If people understood that LLMs basically do keyword association to generate text from a prompt, they wouldn’t believe the lies that claim they “think.” Just a little bit of high level knowledge would change it from “magic” to a sometimes useful everyday tool.
True! I was refering to some stricltly scientific definitions but of course there’s always been popular/broader ones.
We called the basic movement of the grabbers in Defender AI to distinguish it from the fixed movement of Space Invaders. We still call that AI in modern videogames.
What was AI 50 years ago is now AGI,
You’re not wrong, but that’s also a bit misleading. “AI” is all-encompassing while terms like AGI and ASI are subsets. From the 1950s onward AI was expected to evolve quickly as computing evolved, that never happened. Instead, AI mostly topped out with decision trees, like those used for AI in videogames. ML pried the field back open, but not in the ways we expected.
AGI and ASI were coined in the early 2000s to set apart the goal of human-level intelligence from other kinds of AI like videogame AI. This is a natural result of the field advancing in unexpected, divergent directions. It’s not meant to move the goal post, but to clarify future goals against past progress.
It is entirely possible that we develop multiple approaches to AGI that necessitate new terminology to differentiate them. It’s the nature of all evolution, including technology and language.
It’s pretty clear your understanding of the history of computer science comes from Star Wars.
You mean an LLM that doesn’t have the ability to understand context fails to make decisions that require context to do properly? Shocking /s
Except they are using computer vision, not an LLM
And what is processing that information?
Computer vision commonly uses convolutional neural networks on the input, which is different from the transformer neural networks used in LLMs. If you have more info indicating LLMs are used here please share
If you have more info indicating LLMs are used here please share
two seconds of research would reveal LLMs are ALL OVER COMPUTER VISION. Are convolutional networks used? Yes. Are LLMs used? Yes. And MLLMs.
Tell you what sparky: you find me a source that says ONLY CNNs are used, then you can act like a subject matter expert.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2311.16673
https://github.com/OpenGVLab/VisionLLM
https://www.chooch.com/blog/how-to-integrate-large-language-models-with-computer-vision/
I was actually referring to UVEye which was referenced in the article. I looked into UVEye and nowhere did it say it used LLMs with their computer vision. That’s why I asked if anyone had any info on them using it. The comment I replied to assumed LLMs were used but supplied no evidence. None of the links you shared have anything to do with UVEye either.
Computer vision commonly uses convolutional neural networks on the input,
no where do you specify UVEye.
You could admit they’re all over, but instead double down on how I assumed lol
Except they are using computer vision, not an LLM
That’s what I initially said, referring to the article. If you have nothing to say regarding the technology in this article that’s fine, but don’t just assume that since there is research of incorporating LLMs into computer vision means it was used in this specific case.
what do you think is driving the image recognition take that comes from the computer vision hardware?
it’s an LLM.
https://www.chooch.com/blog/how-to-integrate-large-language-models-with-computer-vision/
Fair game. Give me a grease pen and let me mark everything I see. By the time I’m done, they’ll owe me money.
I will bring this up again like I did my last post concerning Hertz.
While I was in Albuquerque, NM getting off the Amtrak train, I reserved our rental car from their website and went to the nonexistent address with no phone number or anything. After half an hour we called another Hertz and they basically told us to piss off and call the location we booked the car. I have few brands that I boycott and now they will be Nestle products (and sub companies) and Hertz.
Nestle products (and sub companies)
That’s a tall order. And just to be clear, not saying we should just give up against those numbers. It’s not an all-or-nothing situation.
Just buy store brands and you’re 80% of the way there.
very often, the storebrand is usually a namebrand product with a different wrapper.
Sometimes it’s made with lower quality ingredients at the same factory, sometimes it’s equivalent.
Some might be lower but some would be the same.
Yea, it’s usually the nicer packaged, higher priced products that make dumb consumers feel like they’re buying something better.
But sometimes the nicer packaged product is better, it depends on the product.
And often times it isn’t. In fact, name-brand can ofter be worse for a multitude of reasons.
I’m interested in examples of when name-brand is worse quality, but yes, name-brand isn’t always objectively better, and is often produced in the same facility.
As usual, it depends, so don’t knee-jerk to all one or the other, if it matters to you, compare the packaging (it’ll say where it was produced, so you can guess when it’s the same product).
Sometimes is doing a lot of work here though
Sure, I’m just not sure if it’s more or less often than when it’s equivalent. It’s frequent enough that you should be careful if quality is what you’re after.
Then you can buy nestle products and feel good about it because it’s got the Kroger label instead of nestle, because store brands are generally name brand products in the stores wrapping.
Careful! Some of us are capable of flipping the package over and reading.
It’s on brand. I pity the fool that doesn’t know hertz is a fucked up rental agency
Isn’t this the same company that called the police on legitimate customers after they messed up the paperwork?
And the company that charges “gas refueling fees” for a fully charged EV.
Holy shit. The contract that dude signed had a maximum fee of $35 for EV recharge, yet they charged him $277 and claimed the contract allowed that. Thankfully, the worst I’ve had from Hertz is they just told me to fuck off and didn’t give me my reserved vehicle.
I’ve had from Hertz is they just told me to fuck off and didn’t give me my reserved vehicle.
And here I thought they just didn’t like me… WTF kind of business is this lol
I’m not unconvinced that it isn’t just an elaborate money laundering company
They charged me for a broken windshield, which I paid and then wouldn’t provide me a receipt for my insurance company. Then to top it off, they turned me into a collections agency because they said I didn’t pay for the windshield. I will never rent from them again.
And I will take this as my cue to mention that Hertz, Dollar and Thrifty are all the same company and they will each of them take every opportunity possible to fuck you.
They’re all rather shitty tbh, with some regional variation
Hertz is a ripoff and a hassle and little else
I am 0% surprised that Hertz would be the first in the US to roll this out. Expecting a Steve Lehto YouTube video about it within the next three days …
He’s already done 3 that I know of
