Stafford Beer said "the purpose of a system is what it does." Accessibility testing reveals what your system actually does—not what you intended.
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@eunews/115945679334683142
The Purpose Of A System Is What It Does.
@ramsey 😡
realistically, using rational judgement on all available data, how could you expect otherwise?
#posiwid why is everyone so willing to forgive and forget when it's a fascist billionaire? Had you or I sent that teen that message as a chat reply, would we be freely walking the street tonight? No.
Elon just has a nice friendly smile, I guess, oh and CBC has always adored men in Gucci shoes.
I get why some #AI companies need to resort to usage-based pricing, but from a user-centered perspective, it’s completely bonkers.
Let me explain.
The better the AI agent, the less you need to iterate, right?
Ideally, it just gets it right from the first prompt.
The more you iterate, the higher your usage.
Still with me?
So usage-based billing = the worse the AI software, the more it costs!
In which other industry would this fly? 🤔
@leaverou this isn’t new behaviour in the software / computing industry, or even more broadly under capitalism - it’s practically SOP & / or a badge of honour for many “entrepreneurs”
operating systems with long-standing security vulnerabilities & no / limited culture of secure-by-design development, OS vendor then sells you an antivirus / security product to “fix” the problem that they allowed to exist in first place (a whole ecosystem of 2° & 3° vendors has sprung up around this)
cloud platform requires higher-tier licensing to access security products to manage platform security, also charges for log storage necessary to fully utilise those licensed security products / components (again, an ecosystem of 2° & 3° vendors have sprung up to paper over the cracks)
and others have already mentioned “boots theory”^ – low-quality products requiring higher expenditure over time than higher-quality products is well-established in other industries (clothing, vehicles, mechanical spares, sporting goods, etc.)
even in healthcare (in some countries), people who can’t afford regular visits to a doctor or the medications they need to treat an initial medical condition will end up having higher medical costs as their un(der)treated illnesses develop into worse conditions requiring more-intensive, higher-cost interventions over time (which, depending on the country, they’ll either continue to be unable to afford and have miserable, shorter lives, or if they’re “lucky” will be borne by the state)
in for-profit healthcare systems, this is the system operating as intended ( #POSIWID )
one of the economic drivers for states that do provide decent healthcare (in addition to believing that citizens should lead healthy lives) is to ensure that people have good access to early interventions so that the state doesn’t bear the higher costs later on
there’s usually no similar incentive for for-profit companies to produce higher-quality goods & services, as weak regulatory regimes tend to go hand-in-hand with aggressive capitalism
^ <obligatory>
X-Clacks-Overhead: #GNUTerryPratchett
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"The purpose of a system is what it does."
#StaffordBeer, 1926-2002
We live in an economic system that routinely gives more resources to people who make weapons than to doctors and nurses. What does that tell you about the purpose of that system?
