Identifying the right target

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Former Welsh Secretary, David Davies, was busy earlier this week blaming AI for his failure to land a lot of jobs for which he applied. Some unkind souls might think that rejecting Davies for a job was actually a feather in the cap of AI, showing it to be a good judge of his suitability for employment. I suspect that the truth is more mundane: there is a valid point in what he has to say about his repeated rejections, but he’s aiming at the wrong target. Then again, grabbing hold of the wrong end of the stick is hardly out of character.

Part of his complaint is that he was applying for degree-level jobs without being in possession of a degree, and AI was rejecting him automatically as a result. In breaking news, and speaking as someone who has done a great deal of recruiting in my time, I can reveal that before AI was even a twinkle in the eye of its inventors, it was customary for employers, using only human perusal processes, to reject such applications. Even if only on the basis that the applicant, by applying for a job for which (s)he didn’t meet the basic criteria was displaying an inability either to read or else to understand the job ad. Recruiters, increasingly faced with a large number of applicants, will usually take a very simple approach to eliminating many of them without further consideration, and that doesn’t require the use of any fancy computer systems.

The bigger question, which he seems to be grasping for but can’t quite articulate effectively, is whether a degree is really necessary for many of those jobs. On that, he has a point. I would agree with him that there are people whose experience gained in the various roles which they’ve performed probably makes their skill set as good as, or even better than, someone who has a piece of paper but little real experience of anything (although I make no judgement here as to whether Davies falls into that category or not). But many employers take the easy way out. Rather than attempt to assess what alternative routes might make someone suitable for a particular job, they simply demand a degree (or some other qualification) and use that as a filter to reduce the number of applications which they receive and then have to peruse. Perhaps his real complaint is that the employers to which he has applied are just too lazy to consider him properly. It might even be fair comment.

If they were using a really good AI system, then AI might well be able to analyse CVs and compare them against job descriptions in great detail, faster than any human could, and identify candidates who might be suitable regardless of their formal qualifications. That would mean that his real complaint ought to be that the AI systems being used aren’t intelligent enough to spot what he clearly believes to be his exceptional talents. It surely couldn’t be that they are indeed using such systems and there just aren’t enough exceptional talents to spot.

Give us the money?

Tweet The Welsh Affairs Committee at Westminster told us yesterday that the UK Government had saved at least £430 million by not electrifying the railway line between Cardiff and Swansea, and suggested that the whole of the money saved should be made available for other transport schemes in Wales.  I’ve got a better idea: if the whole of the money saved by not electrifying the line is available for spending on transport schemes in Wales, why don’t we spend it on electrifying the line between Cardiff and Swansea?  Because, at its simplest, if the cash is available, why not spend it as originally planned?

It wasn’t a lack of money which, allegedly, drove the decision to cancel this part of the electrification project, but an analysis of the cost-benefit ratio, which concluded that the scheme was not good value for money, using the criteria laid down by the government itself.  But whether those criteria are valid or not is ultimately a question of judgement.  They are based, broadly, on a comparison between the cost of doing the work and the value of the time saved by passengers; but given the well-known problems of the railway line west of Cardiff, the time savings were always going to be minimal for that section of track.  It’s much harder to put hard cash values on other benefits of the scheme, such as increased reliability and reduced environmental costs - both from moving away from diesel and attracting more traffic from the roads.

However, the idea that money, once allocated to a scheme in Wales, should be available for other schemes in Wales if the original scheme is cancelled is one with which I’m hardly going to disagree.  The logic of that, though, is that the money and the responsibility should have been allocated to Wales in the first place.  Then we could have decided whether to electrify or not.  The strangest part of all in the story from Westminster is that the man demanding the money comes to Wales anyway is historically one of those most opposed to devolving extra responsibilities to Wales.  Still, he’s a Tory – logic and consistency are not to be expected.

Can anyone be wrong all the time?

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I haven’t always been entirely kind to the MP for Monmouth in this blog.  Well, actually that’s something of an understatement – I don’t think I’ve ever been kind to him.  There’s something about him which provokes an instinctive antipathy in me, and it hasn’t been helped by things such as his call for dental checks on refugee children and his persistent attempts to raise devolved issues in the UK Parliament and for Big Sister to intervene to sort out the Welsh.

On the latter point, he was at it again last week in relation to the Circuit of Wales project, expressing his concern that the Welsh Government might be about to be taken for a short and very expensive ride.  There’s something very shifty about recording a conversation without telling the other participants, but it does make it harder to contradict what he has said about the content of that conversation, and I can’t help thinking that he might actually have a point this time.  It really isn’t a matter for the House of Commons where he raised it, and his comment that someone who can’t make a success of a company with a turnover in the hundreds of thousands can’t be trusted to run a company with a turnover in the millions shows a lack of grasp of the nature of entrepreneurialism, where multiple failures are the norm.

But his core point, that this project is something of a pipe-dream looks to me to be quite possibly right.  One of the things that has become clear over the years is that ‘business plans’ written to be submitted to government agencies and bodies which control the allocation of grants and guarantees often owe more to creative writing skills than to accountancy.  They are written to tick the boxes for the funders or guarantors rather than as an accurate reflection of what will actually happen and the more unique and – dare I use that dreaded word – ‘innovative’ the project, the harder it is to make accurate predictions.

I can understand the desperation of communities where jobs are short and deprivation rife, but this whole project looks to me like clutching at a straw because it’s there rather than because there’s a solid case underlying it.  I can understand the drivers which might lead the Welsh Government to back it with huge sums of public money; they need to be seen to be doing something to help the local communities, and this is, after all, ‘something’.

Sometimes though, tough as it might seem, governments have to have the courage to say when a project is the wrong one at which to throw large sums of government money – money which will not then be available for other and better projects which may come along later. 

Even someone who arouses as much antipathy in me as David Davies probably can’t be wrong all the time.

Sleepwalking

Tweet What is it about politicians and sleepwalking clichés?  Last week, it was David Davis warning us gravely that Wales was “sleepwalking into independence”, in response to Silk 2.  Labour MPs have made similar comments in the past.  Do they really believe that any changes that they don’t like are happening without any of the rest of us noticing?

Mind you, I suppose that one could argue that the apparently never-ending series of reports on commissions recommending change does indeed have a soporific effect; I’ll admit that my eyes start to glaze over when reading some of them, and I’m interested enough to attempt it.

But really – independence when most of the people are asleep and don’t notice what “they” are doing?  If only!  It looks more like hard labour than pleasant sleep to me.

There’s also something rather unpleasant and patronising about the use of the cliché as well.  The unstated meaning is that “we” know better than “you” and if “you” don’t share “our” concerns and objections, it’s because “you” aren’t paying attention.

I don’t know whether Wales will ever become an independent state, however that is defined - although it’s an outcome which I would very much like to see.  I’m certain that if it does happen, it will happen only when the people of Wales will it to be so, and with our collective – if not necessarily unanimous – consent.

I suspect that what Davies and his ilk are really worried about is that nations which start to taste some freedom almost always want more.  And what they really want is to stop us developing that taste.  Not so much a case of us sleepwalking as of him having a nightmare.

What is to be done?

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I quite enjoyed David Davies’ little outburst yesterday about the likely outcome from the Silk Commission.  It’s a real problem, isn't it, when opinion is moving so strongly in one direction that it becomes difficult to find anyone willing to put the opposing case.

I suspect that his suggestion – just publish the report now, and scrap the consultation and evidence taking – was born of frustration and intended to be sarcastic.  But what would he have people do?  Ban most of those supporting further powers from giving evidence so that the committee only hears an equal number of fors and againsts?  Fund some new groups to argue against to try and even the numbers out a bit?

In fact, his tongue-in-cheek suggestion may well be the best and most sensible one, even if he’s likely to be the last one to recognise that.  On those issues where there is an overwhelming consensus, perhaps moving straight to a recommendation and decision really is the easiest way to proceed.  After all, the only reason for holding long drawn-out commissions to consider matters is to appease the vociferous minority who want to stop progress.  People rather like David Davies, in fact.