from Hacker News

AI-Driven Drone Surveillance Is Leading to Home Insurance Cancellations

by kokanator on 8/9/24, 4:31 PM with 59 comments

by jawns on 8/9/24, 4:55 PM
This story appears to be a sloppy, confusing summary of a Business Insider piece by Albert Cahn, the man mentioned in the article. The fact that SCNR makes no reference to this piece is telling:
https://www.businessinsider.com/homeowners-insurance-nightma...
Cahn is the founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, or STOP, a New York-based civil-rights and privacy group, so he certainly has a dog in the ring here, but he also has a horror story to back it up.
The source article on Business Insider contains much more important details:
> Travelers admitted that it screwed up. It never conceded that its AI was wrong to tag me. But it revealed the reason I couldn't find my cancellation notice: The company never sent it.
> Travelers may have invested huge sums in neural networks and drones, but it apparently never updated its billing software to reliably handle the basics. Without a nonrenewal notice, it couldn't legally cancel coverage. Bad cutting edge tech screwed me over; bad basic software bailed me out.
So basically, this comes down to a dispute over how much moss is too much moss to make a roof structurally unsafe. But it sounds like the process goes straight from "AI detects a problem" to "policy gets cancelled," without human review in the middle. Perhaps a less error-prone way of handling it is for the AI's recommendations to trigger a human to go out to the home and investigate?
by w10-1 on 8/9/24, 5:11 PM
We had such a notice, for moss and mold (in a hot, dry climate). The images were accurate enough. The insurance company relented after we remediated and sent photos.
Image recognition is not really "AI-driven", and the low numbers make that replaceable with humans. It's the cost and legality of drone roof photos that make this possible.
The risk represented in the photos was relatively small, but it's a risk easily and legally measured. Then the higher cost of fix + verify is shifted to the homeowner.
The real beneficiary is roofing companies, raising the question of illegal tying. Insurance is required by mortgages, so homeowners have no choice but abate with roofing services, which creates an opportunity for the insurance company and roofers to share value extracted in various ways. Which ways are legal is an open question. The value extracted is bounded by the cost of switching, which involves another company assessing your property in some way; tight home insurance markets thus increase the value extractable.
Insurance mandates and reliance require regulation, as does using private insurance for large social risks like wildfire and earthquakes, but that all makes insurance less competitive by reducing viability of new entrants.
Nothing in the chain of reasoning - from drone pictures to investor decisions - is improper, but boy the resulting homeowner squeeze is painful.
by josefresco on 8/9/24, 4:56 PM
Expanding on this idea - can health insurance companies fly a drone over my house and see me in my hard eating a cheeseburger and cancel my coverage?
Can an auto insurer do the same and cancel my coverage because they see me doing burnouts in my driveway?
Seems like a giant privacy violation but I'm no legal expert.
by angusb on 8/9/24, 4:57 PM
I feel like better transparency about policy holders’ attitude to home maintenance leads to better pricing of risk and that’s a good thing - the problem is really the lack of warning from the insurer that they are about to be dropped. Not even giving the policy holder the chance to take corrective action sucks, and hints at a future where you need to be on best behaviour even in private spaces
by silisili on 8/9/24, 5:03 PM
Are these like military grade aerial drones or something? The one shown in the picture, and those many use to do prelim roof inspections, fly far too low - seems it would be encroachment of owner's property rights, no?
by causal on 8/9/24, 4:59 PM
Another tech asymmetry that puts consumers at a disadvantage.
I wonder if there exists any kind of service for similarly leveraging technology to help consumers find claims opportunities. E.g. run a drone after a hail storm to look for damages that consumers could file claims with. Ideally the carrier would also be doing this, but most aren't going to volunteer money away.
by kokanator on 8/9/24, 4:31 PM
Consumer groups say they've seen a 'dramatic increase' in homeowners dropped from coverage because of aerial images.
by ryandrake on 8/9/24, 5:05 PM
Drone or no drone, insurance companies shouldn't be allowed to suddenly drop a covered customer, without having to work with the customer on correcting whatever they are concerned with. There should be a mandatory grace period allowing the insurer to provide notice and list whatever corrective actions they required, and for the customer to either dispute or take those action. "The Market" is clearly failing to provide this on its own. We need some kind of Insurance Customer Bill of Rights.
by shadowgovt on 8/9/24, 5:12 PM
I think the headline is backwards.
The drones are feeding data. It's drone-driven AI analysis.
They could cut the AI out of the loop and have humans making bad judgment calls and the result would be the same.
by airstrike on 8/9/24, 4:56 PM
Sounds like the homeowners' complaints aren't with the surveillance itself but with too many false positives in the algorithm that marks surveyed processes "uninsurable". It would be just as bad if an agent came to visit and arrived at the same wrong conclusion.
I would further have issues with any drone flying over my property uninvited... even if I don't strictly have issues with companies automating such inspections conditional on them being agreed to in advance.
by tahoeskibum on 8/9/24, 7:12 PM
Add AI and drones for the dystopian effect. Drones allow insurance companies to review the house and surrounding fire risk quite well. Better than having a human drive around a tall selfie stick!
by darby_nine on 8/9/24, 5:01 PM
Such behavior seems like something that should be trivially illegal as an analogy to trespassing. How is it legal to fly a commercial drone over residential areas without consent?
by legitster on 8/9/24, 6:58 PM
This entire article is based on a single anecdote, stolen from another article, about a guy whose policy was never actually cancelled.
This is clickbait.
by jb1991 on 8/9/24, 4:55 PM
I’m frankly surprised this is legal. I can’t imagine something like this passing in the EU.
by renewiltord on 8/9/24, 5:01 PM
Perhaps more people should use Mutual Insurance companies. Then you’re a shareholder in the structure and if they drop you it’s because all the other shareholders felt they didn’t want you.