Latest news with #GeoffreyFowler
Washington Post
13-05-2025
- Automotive
- Washington Post
What to know before getting into a driverless taxi
A Waymo drives past Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler in San Francisco. (Photo by Amy Osborne for The Washington Post) The idea of a car that drives itself might feel futuristic. But for an increasing number of Americans, that future is already here. Waymo and other companies have announced plans to expand in cities across the U.S. And the Trump administration has signaled that it wants to pave the way for autonomous vehicle companies to expand. Last month, it loosened rules around driverless cars. Martine Powers talks with Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler and reporter Lisa Bonos about what it's like to live in a city full of driverless cars – and what you should know before getting in one. Today's show was produced by Emma Talkoff. It was edited by Lucy Perkins and mixed by Sam Bair. Subscribe to The Washington Post here.
Vox
10-04-2025
- Business
- Vox
A surprisingly useful tool for this year's tax season
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. Something unexpected happened recently as I was filing my taxes: AI helped. It even caught an error that my human accountant missed. This was surprising because when I decided to test out a free tax return chatbot, I expected it to tell me to, I don't know, write off my dog as a business expense and pay my IRS bill in magic beans. I can't say it's the first time I've underestimated AI's ability to be useful in my everyday life. I made fun of this simple AI-powered family meal planning app, and several months later, it's gotten good enough that I'm using it on a weekly basis. I used to blankly stare at ChatGPT's empty prompt field, unable to think of anything I might want an AI to do, and now, that box is on my screen at all times as I bounce ideas off the language model, like it's a half-useful intern. I don't trust the AI. But I don't ignore it, either. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. AI is still bad at a lot of things. I encounter hallucinations and inaccurate answers almost every time I use it, so I double-check everything, which takes time. I never believe anything I read on the internet at first glance, anyway. Still, on balance, AI is now saving me so much time and improving my workflow so much that I don't mind. The latest AI models are getting good enough that it's more than worth it to find ways the software can make your life easier. Fielding your most pressing tax questions is a great example of a job AI can try. The tax bots are helpful — and pretty restrained For the 2023 tax year, both TurboTax and H&R Block launched AI-powered chatbots to help customers file their taxes. The tools did not impress Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler, who called the chatbots 'unhelpful' and, more to the point, 'awful.' The companies rolled out the tools before they were finished, and they served up plenty of 'bad advice,' Fowler said in a review last spring. I believe him, but I also had a different experience testing the tools this time around. After last year's reported goof-ups, TurboTax and H&R Block updated their tax bots. They appear to be less bad at first glance. Compared to what I know about the original iterations, the second-generation chatbots seem more low-key and less error-prone. When I asked them really hard questions, they referred me back to help documents or to a human agent. You might think of the chatbots as a coach. They're not going to do your taxes, and they're not supposed to give you inaccurate information. But they are designed to make the process feel less stressful, according to Heather Watts, senior vice president of H&R Block's DIY tax business. 'What we've heard from feedback from users who've used it,' Watts told me, 'is it's just giving them that confidence that what they're doing is accurate, and they feel good about, ultimately, the outcome of their tax refund.' Related One quick trick to make AI actually useful Both TurboTax and H&R Block power their chatbots with proprietary large language models (LLM), trained on the tax code and their internal help documents. This should, in theory, keep the chatbots from drifting too far from dependable information and already-vetted answers to questions. When I asked H&R Block's AI Tax Assist software specific questions about itemized deductions or the child tax credit, I got clear, bullet-pointed responses that often didn't directly answer the question but rather provided generalized information. TurboTax's AI assistant answered some questions but was quick to refer me to help articles or a live human when the questions got more complicated — which is why I describe them as low-key. They're generally pretty restrained and conservative in their willingness to give actual advice. They're not trying too hard to impress you, so they don't fail too hard either. 'They're still not great in very complex situations, and I think that will take some time,' said Subodha Kumar, a professor at the Fox School of Business at Temple University. 'But they have become very good with simpler cases.' They're not trying too hard to impress you, so they don't fail too hard either. Which is not to say these AI chatbots can never be wrong. If these bots give you bad advice — and they gave Fowler from the Washington Post plenty of it last year — your tax return could get flagged by the government and require an amendment. It could cause some unnecessary stress, at best, and at worst, cost you some money. Both TurboTax and H&R Block guarantee accuracy in your finalized tax return. Both companies also tucked access to their chatbots away in the software's help menu, a couple clicks away from the form where you input your financial info. That leads me to believe that people who find them know what they're getting themselves into. And people do seem to be discovering and using these tools. TurboTax told me that while only 15 percent of its customers' questions were answered by AI in 2024, that number has grown to 65 percent this year. There are clear disclaimers about the need to proceed with caution on both platforms. A warning label does not make any product safe, but at least it signals something to the user. In this case, you should review all answers the AI provides. AI is the past and future of accounting The tax world is not new to AI. For years, accounting firms and tech companies alike have been incorporating AI tools to automate and streamline the tax-filing process. TurboTax and H&R Block have already been using AI in the background to give personalized deduction recommendations and to read uploaded documents, including W2s, in order to fill out forms more quickly. Both companies also told me they're using AI to help check the accuracy of tax returns in real time. These kinds of workflows aren't unique to the tax prep giants. In fact, AI is making everything faster through automation across the accounting industry. 'We use a lot of automations to help save us time,' said Anthony Drozd, the operations manager at Sargent CPAs, a New York-based accounting firm. 'If I had to make an educated guess, I would say we've saved about 20 percent of our time with automations that wouldn't have been possible without AI help.' Related AI wants to Google for you The next wave of AI technology, known as agentic AI, could allow the technology to not only recall information and create content but actually carry out tasks. In other words, AI isn't currently doing your taxes. But companies like TurboTax and H&R Block are slowly training their models to do more by watching you do your taxes, so that it can automate the process more in the future, and save time and money. We don't know if that agentic AI future will come to pass. In the meantime, some experts think that these AI chatbots can do more harm than good. Even if TurboTax and H&R Block have improved their models, AI chatbots are an unwelcome intermediary between someone looking for accurate information and that information in its original, vetted form, according to Emily M. Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington and the co-author of The AI Con. 'You end up with something that looks like a cost-cutting measure or looks like a convenient shortcut, and at the same time, it devalues the work of the people who actually do that stuff,' Bender said. Indeed, some in the tax industry are leaning away from the chatbot approach and appealing to the demand for a personal touch. Ernst & Young, for instance, advertises its lack of a chatbot as a reason to pay for its services over the competitors. Taxes are stressful, so why worry about the reliability of the advice you got from an AI chatbot, which is effectively just a sophisticated autocomplete software program. The thing my accountant had missed was no big deal. It ended up not affecting my return this year, but my accountant later told me he was glad I flagged it. And I was glad to have a human there to help me feel a little less scared about tax season.
Vox
10-04-2025
- Business
- Vox
AI is perfect for this stressful, seasonal chore
is a senior technology correspondent at Vox and author of the User Friendly newsletter. He's spent 15 years covering the intersection of technology, culture, and politics at places like The Atlantic, Gizmodo, and Vice. Something unexpected happened recently as I was filing my taxes: AI helped. It even caught an error that my human accountant missed. This was surprising because when I decided to test out a free tax return chatbot, I expected it to tell me to, I don't know, write off my dog as a business expense and pay my IRS bill in magic beans. I can't say it's the first time I've underestimated AI's ability to be useful in my everyday life. I made fun of this simple AI-powered family meal planning app, and several months later, it's gotten good enough that I'm using it on a weekly basis. I used to blankly stare at ChatGPT's empty prompt field, unable to think of anything I might want an AI to do, and now, that box is on my screen at all times as I bounce ideas off the language model, like it's a half-useful intern. I don't trust the AI. But I don't ignore it, either. User Friendly A weekly dispatch to make sure tech is working for you, instead of overwhelming you. From senior technology correspondent Adam Clark Estes. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. AI is still bad at a lot of things. I encounter hallucinations and inaccurate answers almost every time I use it, so I double-check everything, which takes time. I never believe anything I read on the internet at first glance, anyway. Still, on balance, AI is now saving me so much time and improving my workflow so much that I don't mind. The latest AI models are getting good enough that it's more than worth it to find ways the software can make your life easier. Fielding your most pressing tax questions is a great example of a job AI can try. The tax bots are helpful — and pretty restrained For the 2023 tax year, both TurboTax and H&R Block launched AI-powered chatbots to help customers file their taxes. The tools did not impress Washington Post tech columnist Geoffrey Fowler, who called the chatbots 'unhelpful' and, more to the point, 'awful.' The companies rolled out the tools before they were finished, and they served up plenty of 'bad advice,' Fowler said in a review last spring. I believe him, but I also had a different experience testing the tools this time around. After last year's reported goof-ups, TurboTax and H&R Block updated their tax bots. They appear to be less bad at first glance. Compared to what I know about the original iterations, the second-generation chatbots seem more low-key and less error-prone. When I asked them really hard questions, they referred me back to help documents or to a human agent. You might think of the chatbots as a coach. They're not going to do your taxes, and they're not supposed to give you inaccurate information. But they are designed to make the process feel less stressful, according to Heather Watts, senior vice president of H&R Block's DIY tax business. 'What we've heard from feedback from users who've used it,' Watts told me, 'is it's just giving them that confidence that what they're doing is accurate, and they feel good about, ultimately, the outcome of their tax refund.' Related One quick trick to make AI actually useful Both TurboTax and H&R Block power their chatbots with proprietary large language models (LLM), trained on the tax code and their internal help documents. This should, in theory, keep the chatbots from drifting too far from dependable information and already-vetted answers to questions. When I asked H&R Block's AI Tax Assist software specific questions about itemized deductions or the child tax credit, I got clear, bullet-pointed responses that often didn't directly answer the question but rather provided generalized information. TurboTax's AI assistant answered some questions but was quick to refer me to help articles or a live human when the questions got more complicated — which is why I describe them as low-key. They're generally pretty restrained and conservative in their willingness to give actual advice. They're not trying too hard to impress you, so they don't fail too hard either. 'They're still not great in very complex situations, and I think that will take some time,' said Subodha Kumar, a professor at the Fox School of Business at Temple University. 'But they have become very good with simpler cases.' They're not trying too hard to impress you, so they don't fail too hard either. Which is not to say these AI chatbots can never be wrong. If these bots give you bad advice — and they gave Fowler from the Washington Post plenty of it last year — your tax return could get flagged by the government and require an amendment. It could cause some unnecessary stress, at best, and at worst, cost you some money. Both TurboTax and H&R Block guarantee accuracy in your finalized tax return. Both companies also tucked access to their chatbots away in the software's help menu, a couple clicks away from the form where you input your financial info. That leads me to believe that people who find them know what they're getting themselves into. And people do seem to be discovering and using these tools. TurboTax told me that while only 15 percent of its customers' questions were answered by AI in 2024, that number has grown to 65 percent this year. There are clear disclaimers about the need to proceed with caution on both platforms. A warning label does not make any product safe, but at least it signals something to the user. In this case, you should review all answers the AI provides. AI is the past and future of accounting The tax world is not new to AI. For years, accounting firms and tech companies alike have been incorporating AI tools to automate and streamline the tax-filing process. TurboTax and H&R Block have already been using AI in the background to give personalized deduction recommendations and to read uploaded documents, including W2s, in order to fill out forms more quickly. Both companies also told me they're using AI to help check the accuracy of tax returns in real time. These kinds of workflows aren't unique to the tax prep giants. In fact, AI is making everything faster through automation across the accounting industry. 'We use a lot of automations to help save us time,' said Anthony Drozd, the operations manager at Sargent CPAs, a New York-based accounting firm. 'If I had to make an educated guess, I would say we've saved about 20 percent of our time with automations that wouldn't have been possible without AI help.' Related AI wants to Google for you The next wave of AI technology, known as agentic AI, could allow the technology to not only recall information and create content but actually carry out tasks. In other words, AI isn't currently doing your taxes. But companies like TurboTax and H&R Block are slowly training their models to do more by watching you do your taxes, so that it can automate the process more in the future, and save time and money. We don't know if that agentic AI future will come to pass. In the meantime, some experts think that these AI chatbots can do more harm than good. Even if TurboTax and H&R Block have improved their models, AI chatbots are an unwelcome intermediary between someone looking for accurate information and that information in its original, vetted form, according to Emily M. Bender, a linguistics professor at the University of Washington and the co-author of The AI Con. 'You end up with something that looks like a cost-cutting measure or looks like a convenient shortcut, and at the same time, it devalues the work of the people who actually do that stuff,' Bender said. Indeed, some in the tax industry are leaning away from the chatbot approach and appealing to the demand for a personal touch. Ernst & Young, for instance, advertises its lack of a chatbot as a reason to pay for its services over the competitors. Taxes are stressful, so why worry about the reliability of the advice you got from an AI chatbot, which is effectively just a sophisticated autocomplete software program. The thing my accountant had missed was no big deal. It ended up not affecting my return this year, but my accountant later told me he was glad I flagged it. And I was glad to have a human there to help me feel a little less scared about tax season.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Yahoo
Why I'm Not Deleting My 23andMe Genetic Data
Various corners of the media and internet are hyperventilating over the alleged genetic privacy implications of the imminent Chapter 11 bankruptcy of the direct-to-consumer genetic testing company 23andMe. "Delete your DNA from 23andMe right now," yelps a headline over at The Washington Post. Why? "Unless you take action, there is a risk your genetic information could end up in someone else's hands—and used in ways you had never considered," ominously warns Post journalist Geoffrey Fowler. NPR reports that Suzanne Bernstein, counsel at the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Center, advises that any concerned 23andMe customers should delete their data, request that their saliva sample be destroyed, and revoke any permissions they may have given to use their genetic information for research. "This is just the first example of a company like this with tremendous amounts of sensitive data being bought or sold," she added. California Attorney General Rob Bonta urgently issued a consumer alert reminding "Californians of their right to direct the deletion of their genetic data under the Genetic Information Privacy Act (GIPA) and California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)." Calm down people. Genetic data are not especially toxic or extraordinarily dangerous. Nor are the privacy implications all that dire, especially compared to other widely available and easily deployed surveillance tools. It is true that your genome is a permanent and immutable marker of your personal identity, but so too are your fingerprints and your face. The FBI's Next Generation Identification system contains the fingerprints of more than 186 million criminal, civil, and military individuals. (As a twenty-something, I worked briefly as a federal bureaucrat so my fingerprints are definitely in the system.) While fingerprints have to be collected onsite and compared using offsite databases, facial recognition cameras with real-time database matching can become ubiquitous, able to track you nearly everywhere you go in public. Your face may be your passport but it's also your snitch. Another often-expressed concern is that your genetic data could be used to identify relatives who have committed crimes. Police are now regularly using forensic genetic genealogy to identify suspects. They compare a DNA sample from a crime scene with commercial DNA databases, searching for genetic similarities among customers who may be relatives. Genealogists then identify likely suspects by cross-referencing the genetic data with traditional genealogical sources, such as census records, birth and death certificates, and so forth. It is worth noting that 23andMe requires a warrant to release customer data to the police, unlike some other direct-to-consumer genetic testing companies. In addition, the FBI's National DNA Index contains over 18,135,382 offender profiles, 5,774,055 arrestee profiles, and 1,391,726 forensic profiles as of January 2025. Data deletion alarmists point out that 23andMe suffered a data breach in 2023 in which the records of nearly 7 million of its customers were stolen by a hacker. Sounds bad, but do you know who else suffered recent data breaches? Hospital and medical records companies: some 2.7 million patient records held by ESO Solutions; 9 million held by medical transcription firm Perry Johnson & Associates; 8.5 million at Welltok; and 11 million at HCA Healthcare. All of these were just in 2023. Overall, healthcare breaches exposed 385 million patient records between 2010 to 2022. Hackers typically demand a ransom to unencrypt pilfered files, but also often engage in double extortion by also threatening to publicly release them. Medical records companies pay because they fear that data exposure can lead to legal consequences, regulatory fines, and reputational damage. Much less commonly, hackers try to blackmail individual patients. A couple of such instances involved attempts to blackmail patients at a Finnish mental health clinic and a Florida plastic surgery practice. Compare the consequences of these non-genetic database breaches to how information from the 23andMe data breach could supposedly be misused. One suggestion is that your genetic data might be used to blackmail you. If you've committed an unsolved murder or a rape or have produced stray progeny, you might worry about the prospect of blackmail. Data such as names, addresses, and birth dates stored by 23andMe might be used to impersonate you, but that is not a risk particular to the genetic information collected by 23andMe. More far-fetched is the notion that your genetic data might somehow contribute to the creation of a bioweapon. But what about genetic discrimination? The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA) forbids employers and health insurers from requiring genetic data from you or using it to discriminate against you. For example, health insurers may not use genetic information to determine if someone is eligible for insurance or to make coverage, underwriting, or premium-setting decisions. However, GINA does not cover life, disability, or long-term care insurance. So far, Florida is the only state that forbids life and long-term insurance providers to cancel, limit, or deny coverage or establish differentials in insurance rates based on genetic information. In any case, no life insurance companies so far require any genetic testing or access to direct-to-consumer genetic data when issuing policies. They can, however, consider any genetic data that is included as a matter of course in a person's medical records, which somewhat paradoxically can lead to insights about a patient's genetics. Let me use myself as an example. A few years back I was seeking to purchase some additional life insurance, which involved disclosing my medical records, a physical exam, and some blood tests. Based on a specific blood test revealing slightly elevated NT-ProBNP levels, the company doubled its offered premium. I turned down the insurance, but I was intrigued by the data suggesting possible heart failure. To make a long story short, MRIs found that I did have a touch of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) that has very slightly thickened the walls of my left ventricle. Initial genetic testing by Invitae reported an inconclusive test result showing a change in the TNNC1 gene that may or may not cause or contribute to HCM. Subsequent evaluation eventually concluded that the variant does contribute to HCM. Hopefully, the information about my TNNC1 variant will be of use to others in the future. The good news is that the interaction of that genetic variant with my environment has resulted in a very mild version of the malady, such that my cardiologist assures me my HCM genetics is not what is going to kill me. More cases of non-genetic medical tests uncovering genetic contributions to ailments are already on the way. For example, recent very accurate blood tests can diagnose the development of Alzheimer's disease years in advance. Whereas tests for gene variants associated with late-onset Alzheimer's identify increased risk of the malady. For what it's worth, my 23andMe test results tell me that I do not carry the Alzheimer's high-risk APOE4 variant. So far as I can tell, no life or long-term care insurance companies are requiring such blood tests yet, but given my NT-ProBNP experience, they will likely include them soon. And insurers doubtlessly will now take Alzheimer's blood test results into account if they turn up in your medical records. Let's consider privacy with respect to medical versus genetic data. All of us experience some self-consciousness about the infirmities and illnesses that inevitably afflict us. That self-consciousness stems partially from the fact that none of us wants to be regarded by others as weak and incompetent, unable to pull our own weight. Our medical records document the toll that time takes on our bodies. So privacy protections (the damnable Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act—a topic for another time) are supposed to provide us with some measure of control over what we reveal to others as we curate our public images as independent and capable agents. But how self-conscious should a person be about their genetic information? I interviewed Michael Cariaso, developer of the online genetic analysis tool Promethease, for my 2011 article on the early days of direct-to-consumer genetic testing. Asked why he had not publicly posted his genetic testing results, he responded, "someone later might discover that I have genes for a short penis and low intelligence." Undeterred by similar concerns, I posted online my 23andMe genetic screening results at SNPedia, where I invite anyone to review my numerous genetic flaws. My 23andMe health predisposition reports suggest that I have gene variants that put me at higher risk for coronary artery disease, gallstones, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, atrial fibrillation, and severe acne. I list those specifically because I have recently had medical tests that show no coronary artery blockages, no gallstones, a normal liver, and a regularly beating heart. I confess that I had a morbidly bad case of acne back in high school. With respect to the other high-risk variants identified by my genetic screening tests, none have resulted in any noticeable illnesses as yet. Other genes (certainly not my clean living) not sequenced or identified yet by 23andMe are likely counteracting the deleterious effects of the higher-risk variants. Clearly, I think that the deletists' claim that the genetic information held by 23andMe is especially "sensitive" is wrong. I invite my fellow 23andMe customers to consider why nearly 80 percent of you agreed to participate in 23andMe research efforts. Besides hoping to gain some insights about yourself, you also want to help advance medical science. The company may or may not survive, but its stored genetic data remains a scientifically and medically valuable resource that some other research firm or institution may use to help develop new treatments and cures. Keep that in mind and resist being panicked into deleting your data for some speculative gain in privacy. The post Why I'm Not Deleting My 23andMe Genetic Data appeared first on
