today in "are you telling me people are using AI at their job to provide important information", I am out a couple of hundred pounds and am now homeless partly because of it.
I went to see a flat that's in a village between two cities, and I asked the estate agent which one of the cities is the local housing authority (LHA) for it. this makes the difference between "can afford the rent" and "cannot afford the rent", as one of the LHAs pays Ā£127 per month more than the other. she double checks it for me during the viewing, and confidently tells me that it's the one which pays more.
because of this, I applied to live at the property and was accepted by the landlord. I paid a non-refundable holding deposit which would be taken off the first month's rent if my referencing is successful.
last night I was double checking the exact LHA rate because my previous place was a bit cheaper than the full available amount of the allowance, so when I was submitting my benefits statements I needed to provide that information to demonstrate my full income.
so, I go to the government's LHA checker website. I type in the postcode. it tells me that, in actual fact, the LHA is the other city. the one that gives Ā£127 per month less. the one which means I couldn't afford to live at this property. the one where if she'd told me when I asked that it was this LHA I would never have applied for the flat.
I'm talking to @bloodlinemagick about how she made a mistake and we were like damn she must have looked at an information sheet for the wrong property or something, and we're saying, well, it does happen but it also means that, given that I moved out of my previous place last night into temporary accommodation with my parents (not a long-term solution by any means), I'm just going to be homeless a bit longer and stuck paying for a storage unit whilst having no housing overheads covered. I turned down a different place for this one, but this close to Christmas there's not going to be anything else coming on the market until January. this is our focus.
then she sends me a voice note like babes my mum has worked out how this happened and I am so fucking sorry.
we had been assuming that the estate agent did the same thing we had: looked on the government's website (presumably confusing the postcode); or maybe that she had some kind of information sheet for the properties she was showing that day and looked at the wrong one by accident.
but her mum had gone to google to see what happened if you searched "what is the local housing authority for [village]"
and the AI summary confidently tells you it's the wrong one.
which she then repeated to me, and I relied upon to apply for housing.
and like, when she said this, I remembered that she got out her phone and typed in something once before giving me the answer, and I realised that was exactly what she fucking did.
so yeah for the love of FUCK do NOT trust those summaries for ANYTHING, but ESPECIALLY not anything important!!!!!!
and I guess assume that other people, even people whose job it is to know these things, might actually be using AI and check for yourself.
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