Board of Veterans Appeals (Attorney Advisor)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think people here are catastrophizing. We don’t know what will happen, so I’m suspicious of anyone who announces they know the number with certainty. But we are in a better position than a lot of people. Clearly we are vulnerable to the RIF, some will probably lose jobs, but I do not think we are the priority for deep cuts. Yes, a lot of agencies have cut past the point of functioning, but VA is cutting less than other agencies percentage wise. That tells me this administration cares about our mission enough to not want to destroy it. We are mission critical. The project 2025 conservative agenda for VA is to privatize VHA and automate VBA. We don’t feature. So my guess is the RIFs focus on VHA to break it to the point of facilitating privatization. I think there will likely be a push to utilize AI more at VBA with an eye towards automation, but I don’t think it will get far because AI hallucinates. I don’t think they’ll make moves to automate our jobs unless it works at VBA and there’s no big pushback.

My most hopeful prediction is maybe they fire non vet probies, and maybe won’t even get that far if enough people take the DRP 2.0. I don’t know what will happen, but that’s my hopeful speculation.

AI hallucination is a nonissue in this context. It hallucinates because it's allowed to do so. There are products that do not hallucinate, such as that provided by Lexis. The hallucination that you hear about in briefs and the news is because folks are using products like off the shelf GPT, which has no parameters that would prevent the hallucination. I was using AI before I joined BVA, and am a strong proponent for its rollout at BVA.

BVA is literally decades behind what the rest of the legal community is doing in terms of doc review, de-duplicating, predictive coding, analysis, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people here are catastrophizing. We don’t know what will happen, so I’m suspicious of anyone who announces they know the number with certainty. But we are in a better position than a lot of people. Clearly we are vulnerable to the RIF, some will probably lose jobs, but I do not think we are the priority for deep cuts. Yes, a lot of agencies have cut past the point of functioning, but VA is cutting less than other agencies percentage wise. That tells me this administration cares about our mission enough to not want to destroy it. We are mission critical. The project 2025 conservative agenda for VA is to privatize VHA and automate VBA. We don’t feature. So my guess is the RIFs focus on VHA to break it to the point of facilitating privatization. I think there will likely be a push to utilize AI more at VBA with an eye towards automation, but I don’t think it will get far because AI hallucinates. I don’t think they’ll make moves to automate our jobs unless it works at VBA and there’s no big pushback.

My most hopeful prediction is maybe they fire non vet probies, and maybe won’t even get that far if enough people take the DRP 2.0. I don’t know what will happen, but that’s my hopeful speculation.

AI hallucination is a nonissue in this context. It hallucinates because it's allowed to do so. There are products that do not hallucinate, such as that provided by Lexis. The hallucination that you hear about in briefs and the news is because folks are using products like off the shelf GPT, which has no parameters that would prevent the hallucination. I was using AI before I joined BVA, and am a strong proponent for its rollout at BVA.

BVA is literally decades behind what the rest of the legal community is doing in terms of doc review, de-duplicating, predictive coding, analysis, etc.

I’m hopeful that in the next 10 years, BVA will widely implement AI to adjudicate cases. If all goes well, BVA can reduce attorney headcount to 100 experienced attorneys to conduct quality reviews of AI decisions.

[Anonymous]

If you can get veterans to agree to accept denials of their claims by AI and give up on having a human being look at it, then you can probably convince them to have it decided by a coin toss. Why pay for AI when a penny is cheaper?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Now they’re asking us to report our coworkers who may vaguely have some anti-christian bias. I’m sure that won’t be abused at all.

I had to stop myself from asking them for a definition of "christian" and "christianity." If you read through the list, there's something about religious statues or figures aka idols which leads me to believe they do not understand that some Christians object to certain things and others, notably Catholics when it comes to statues and the like, do not. At first I thought maybe Catholics were excluded from the definition of Christian but it seems that the real target here is people who support abortion access as if that is somehow related to being a Christian. And what exactly does it mean to "abstain" from abortion. lol. I'm laughing now but I cried when I got the email.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you can get veterans to agree to accept denials of their claims by AI and give up on having a human being look at it, then you can probably convince them to have it decided by a coin toss. Why pay for AI when a penny is cheaper?

I don’t think veterans care who adjudicates their cases so long as the decisions are in their favor.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people here are catastrophizing. We don’t know what will happen, so I’m suspicious of anyone who announces they know the number with certainty. But we are in a better position than a lot of people. Clearly we are vulnerable to the RIF, some will probably lose jobs, but I do not think we are the priority for deep cuts. Yes, a lot of agencies have cut past the point of functioning, but VA is cutting less than other agencies percentage wise. That tells me this administration cares about our mission enough to not want to destroy it. We are mission critical. The project 2025 conservative agenda for VA is to privatize VHA and automate VBA. We don’t feature. So my guess is the RIFs focus on VHA to break it to the point of facilitating privatization. I think there will likely be a push to utilize AI more at VBA with an eye towards automation, but I don’t think it will get far because AI hallucinates. I don’t think they’ll make moves to automate our jobs unless it works at VBA and there’s no big pushback.

My most hopeful prediction is maybe they fire non vet probies, and maybe won’t even get that far if enough people take the DRP 2.0. I don’t know what will happen, but that’s my hopeful speculation.

AI hallucination is a nonissue in this context. It hallucinates because it's allowed to do so. There are products that do not hallucinate, such as that provided by Lexis. The hallucination that you hear about in briefs and the news is because folks are using products like off the shelf GPT, which has no parameters that would prevent the hallucination. I was using AI before I joined BVA, and am a strong proponent for its rollout at BVA.

BVA is literally decades behind what the rest of the legal community is doing in terms of doc review, de-duplicating, predictive coding, analysis, etc.

I’m hopeful that in the next 10 years, BVA will widely implement AI to adjudicate cases. If all goes well, BVA can reduce attorney headcount to 100 experienced attorneys to conduct quality reviews of AI decisions.

Will AI make credibility determinations? That is a major issue that comes into factor with lay evidence. Also, would CAVC accept a credibility determination made by AI?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now they’re asking us to report our coworkers who may vaguely have some anti-christian bias. I’m sure that won’t be abused at all.

I had to stop myself from asking them for a definition of "christian" and "christianity." If you read through the list, there's something about religious statues or figures aka idols which leads me to believe they do not understand that some Christians object to certain things and others, notably Catholics when it comes to statues and the like, do not. At first I thought maybe Catholics were excluded from the definition of Christian but it seems that the real target here is people who support abortion access as if that is somehow related to being a Christian. And what exactly does it mean to "abstain" from abortion. lol. I'm laughing now but I cried when I got the email.

Have you been in a Catholic church? Catholics love some Jesus statues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now they’re asking us to report our coworkers who may vaguely have some anti-christian bias. I’m sure that won’t be abused at all.

I had to stop myself from asking them for a definition of "christian" and "christianity." If you read through the list, there's something about religious statues or figures aka idols which leads me to believe they do not understand that some Christians object to certain things and others, notably Catholics when it comes to statues and the like, do not. At first I thought maybe Catholics were excluded from the definition of Christian but it seems that the real target here is people who support abortion access as if that is somehow related to being a Christian. And what exactly does it mean to "abstain" from abortion. lol. I'm laughing now but I cried when I got the email.

Have you been in a Catholic church? Catholics love some Jesus statues.

I stated that Catholics don't object to statues, however some Christian denominations do, based on their interpretation of the commandments and the Bible. My point is that this isn't about Christianity at all. It's about consolidating power. Henry VIII paved the way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people here are catastrophizing. We don’t know what will happen, so I’m suspicious of anyone who announces they know the number with certainty. But we are in a better position than a lot of people. Clearly we are vulnerable to the RIF, some will probably lose jobs, but I do not think we are the priority for deep cuts. Yes, a lot of agencies have cut past the point of functioning, but VA is cutting less than other agencies percentage wise. That tells me this administration cares about our mission enough to not want to destroy it. We are mission critical. The project 2025 conservative agenda for VA is to privatize VHA and automate VBA. We don’t feature. So my guess is the RIFs focus on VHA to break it to the point of facilitating privatization. I think there will likely be a push to utilize AI more at VBA with an eye towards automation, but I don’t think it will get far because AI hallucinates. I don’t think they’ll make moves to automate our jobs unless it works at VBA and there’s no big pushback.

My most hopeful prediction is maybe they fire non vet probies, and maybe won’t even get that far if enough people take the DRP 2.0. I don’t know what will happen, but that’s my hopeful speculation.

AI hallucination is a nonissue in this context. It hallucinates because it's allowed to do so. There are products that do not hallucinate, such as that provided by Lexis. The hallucination that you hear about in briefs and the news is because folks are using products like off the shelf GPT, which has no parameters that would prevent the hallucination. I was using AI before I joined BVA, and am a strong proponent for its rollout at BVA.

BVA is literally decades behind what the rest of the legal community is doing in terms of doc review, de-duplicating, predictive coding, analysis, etc.

I’m hopeful that in the next 10 years, BVA will widely implement AI to adjudicate cases. If all goes well, BVA can reduce attorney headcount to 100 experienced attorneys to conduct quality reviews of AI decisions.

What joke. Let’s just decide every case by coin toss then. AI can’t practice law.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Now they’re asking us to report our coworkers who may vaguely have some anti-christian bias. I’m sure that won’t be abused at all.

I had to stop myself from asking them for a definition of "christian" and "christianity." If you read through the list, there's something about religious statues or figures aka idols which leads me to believe they do not understand that some Christians object to certain things and others, notably Catholics when it comes to statues and the like, do not. At first I thought maybe Catholics were excluded from the definition of Christian but it seems that the real target here is people who support abortion access as if that is somehow related to being a Christian. And what exactly does it mean to "abstain" from abortion. lol. I'm laughing now but I cried when I got the email.

Have you been in a Catholic church? Catholics love some Jesus statues.

I stated that Catholics don't object to statues. However some Christian denominations do, based on their interpretation of the commandments and the Bible. My point is that this isn't about Christianity at all. It's about consolidating power. Henry VIII paved the way.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people here are catastrophizing. We don’t know what will happen, so I’m suspicious of anyone who announces they know the number with certainty. But we are in a better position than a lot of people. Clearly we are vulnerable to the RIF, some will probably lose jobs, but I do not think we are the priority for deep cuts. Yes, a lot of agencies have cut past the point of functioning, but VA is cutting less than other agencies percentage wise. That tells me this administration cares about our mission enough to not want to destroy it. We are mission critical. The project 2025 conservative agenda for VA is to privatize VHA and automate VBA. We don’t feature. So my guess is the RIFs focus on VHA to break it to the point of facilitating privatization. I think there will likely be a push to utilize AI more at VBA with an eye towards automation, but I don’t think it will get far because AI hallucinates. I don’t think they’ll make moves to automate our jobs unless it works at VBA and there’s no big pushback.

My most hopeful prediction is maybe they fire non vet probies, and maybe won’t even get that far if enough people take the DRP 2.0. I don’t know what will happen, but that’s my hopeful speculation.

AI hallucination is a nonissue in this context. It hallucinates because it's allowed to do so. There are products that do not hallucinate, such as that provided by Lexis. The hallucination that you hear about in briefs and the news is because folks are using products like off the shelf GPT, which has no parameters that would prevent the hallucination. I was using AI before I joined BVA, and am a strong proponent for its rollout at BVA.

BVA is literally decades behind what the rest of the legal community is doing in terms of doc review, de-duplicating, predictive coding, analysis, etc.

I’m hopeful that in the next 10 years, BVA will widely implement AI to adjudicate cases. If all goes well, BVA can reduce attorney headcount to 100 experienced attorneys to conduct quality reviews of AI decisions.

Will AI make credibility determinations? That is a major issue that comes into factor with lay evidence. Also, would CAVC accept a credibility determination made by AI?

Sure, it could. It would consider the same things that we do - consistency, corroboration, testimonial infirmities, etc.

CCW can absolutely be programmed.

BVA work is very basic and formulaic.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people here are catastrophizing. We don’t know what will happen, so I’m suspicious of anyone who announces they know the number with certainty. But we are in a better position than a lot of people. Clearly we are vulnerable to the RIF, some will probably lose jobs, but I do not think we are the priority for deep cuts. Yes, a lot of agencies have cut past the point of functioning, but VA is cutting less than other agencies percentage wise. That tells me this administration cares about our mission enough to not want to destroy it. We are mission critical. The project 2025 conservative agenda for VA is to privatize VHA and automate VBA. We don’t feature. So my guess is the RIFs focus on VHA to break it to the point of facilitating privatization. I think there will likely be a push to utilize AI more at VBA with an eye towards automation, but I don’t think it will get far because AI hallucinates. I don’t think they’ll make moves to automate our jobs unless it works at VBA and there’s no big pushback.

My most hopeful prediction is maybe they fire non vet probies, and maybe won’t even get that far if enough people take the DRP 2.0. I don’t know what will happen, but that’s my hopeful speculation.

AI hallucination is a nonissue in this context. It hallucinates because it's allowed to do so. There are products that do not hallucinate, such as that provided by Lexis. The hallucination that you hear about in briefs and the news is because folks are using products like off the shelf GPT, which has no parameters that would prevent the hallucination. I was using AI before I joined BVA, and am a strong proponent for its rollout at BVA.

BVA is literally decades behind what the rest of the legal community is doing in terms of doc review, de-duplicating, predictive coding, analysis, etc.

I’m hopeful that in the next 10 years, BVA will widely implement AI to adjudicate cases. If all goes well, BVA can reduce attorney headcount to 100 experienced attorneys to conduct quality reviews of AI decisions.

Will AI make credibility determinations? That is a major issue that comes into factor with lay evidence. Also, would CAVC accept a credibility determination made by AI?

Sure, it could. It would consider the same things that we do - consistency, corroboration, testimonial infirmities, etc.

CCW can absolutely be programmed.

BVA work is very basic and formulaic.

Actually, you don’t need judges then. You still need attorneys. That’s what your argument comes down to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people here are catastrophizing. We don’t know what will happen, so I’m suspicious of anyone who announces they know the number with certainty. But we are in a better position than a lot of people. Clearly we are vulnerable to the RIF, some will probably lose jobs, but I do not think we are the priority for deep cuts. Yes, a lot of agencies have cut past the point of functioning, but VA is cutting less than other agencies percentage wise. That tells me this administration cares about our mission enough to not want to destroy it. We are mission critical. The project 2025 conservative agenda for VA is to privatize VHA and automate VBA. We don’t feature. So my guess is the RIFs focus on VHA to break it to the point of facilitating privatization. I think there will likely be a push to utilize AI more at VBA with an eye towards automation, but I don’t think it will get far because AI hallucinates. I don’t think they’ll make moves to automate our jobs unless it works at VBA and there’s no big pushback.

My most hopeful prediction is maybe they fire non vet probies, and maybe won’t even get that far if enough people take the DRP 2.0. I don’t know what will happen, but that’s my hopeful speculation.

AI hallucination is a nonissue in this context. It hallucinates because it's allowed to do so. There are products that do not hallucinate, such as that provided by Lexis. The hallucination that you hear about in briefs and the news is because folks are using products like off the shelf GPT, which has no parameters that would prevent the hallucination. I was using AI before I joined BVA, and am a strong proponent for its rollout at BVA.

BVA is literally decades behind what the rest of the legal community is doing in terms of doc review, de-duplicating, predictive coding, analysis, etc.

I’m hopeful that in the next 10 years, BVA will widely implement AI to adjudicate cases. If all goes well, BVA can reduce attorney headcount to 100 experienced attorneys to conduct quality reviews of AI decisions.

Will AI make credibility determinations? That is a major issue that comes into factor with lay evidence. Also, would CAVC accept a credibility determination made by AI?

Sure, it could. It would consider the same things that we do - consistency, corroboration, testimonial infirmities, etc.

CCW can absolutely be programmed.

BVA work is very basic and formulaic.

Actually, you don’t need judges then. You still need attorneys. That’s what your argument comes down to.

That is true. If you just rely on AI, you don’t need any judges. And I think you people are all making this way too simple. AI is only a tool. It can’t be an end. If I have something seriously wrong with me, I can turn to the Internet to help me diagnose, but I’m going to see a doctor for a real opinion.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people here are catastrophizing. We don’t know what will happen, so I’m suspicious of anyone who announces they know the number with certainty. But we are in a better position than a lot of people. Clearly we are vulnerable to the RIF, some will probably lose jobs, but I do not think we are the priority for deep cuts. Yes, a lot of agencies have cut past the point of functioning, but VA is cutting less than other agencies percentage wise. That tells me this administration cares about our mission enough to not want to destroy it. We are mission critical. The project 2025 conservative agenda for VA is to privatize VHA and automate VBA. We don’t feature. So my guess is the RIFs focus on VHA to break it to the point of facilitating privatization. I think there will likely be a push to utilize AI more at VBA with an eye towards automation, but I don’t think it will get far because AI hallucinates. I don’t think they’ll make moves to automate our jobs unless it works at VBA and there’s no big pushback.

My most hopeful prediction is maybe they fire non vet probies, and maybe won’t even get that far if enough people take the DRP 2.0. I don’t know what will happen, but that’s my hopeful speculation.

AI hallucination is a nonissue in this context. It hallucinates because it's allowed to do so. There are products that do not hallucinate, such as that provided by Lexis. The hallucination that you hear about in briefs and the news is because folks are using products like off the shelf GPT, which has no parameters that would prevent the hallucination. I was using AI before I joined BVA, and am a strong proponent for its rollout at BVA.

BVA is literally decades behind what the rest of the legal community is doing in terms of doc review, de-duplicating, predictive coding, analysis, etc.

I’m hopeful that in the next 10 years, BVA will widely implement AI to adjudicate cases. If all goes well, BVA can reduce attorney headcount to 100 experienced attorneys to conduct quality reviews of AI decisions.

Will AI make credibility determinations? That is a major issue that comes into factor with lay evidence. Also, would CAVC accept a credibility determination made by AI?

Sure, it could. It would consider the same things that we do - consistency, corroboration, testimonial infirmities, etc.

CCW can absolutely be programmed.

BVA work is very basic and formulaic.

Actually, you don’t need judges then. You still need attorneys. That’s what your argument comes down to.

That is true. If you just rely on AI, you don’t need any judges. And I think you people are all making this way too simple. AI is only a tool. It can’t be an end. If I have something seriously wrong with me, I can turn to the Internet to help me diagnose, but I’m going to see a doctor for a real opinion.

That’s why BVA needs a cadre of 100 or so experienced attorneys to review AI drafted decisions for quality. Humans won’t be completely out of the adjudication process, at least not yet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think people here are catastrophizing. We don’t know what will happen, so I’m suspicious of anyone who announces they know the number with certainty. But we are in a better position than a lot of people. Clearly we are vulnerable to the RIF, some will probably lose jobs, but I do not think we are the priority for deep cuts. Yes, a lot of agencies have cut past the point of functioning, but VA is cutting less than other agencies percentage wise. That tells me this administration cares about our mission enough to not want to destroy it. We are mission critical. The project 2025 conservative agenda for VA is to privatize VHA and automate VBA. We don’t feature. So my guess is the RIFs focus on VHA to break it to the point of facilitating privatization. I think there will likely be a push to utilize AI more at VBA with an eye towards automation, but I don’t think it will get far because AI hallucinates. I don’t think they’ll make moves to automate our jobs unless it works at VBA and there’s no big pushback.

My most hopeful prediction is maybe they fire non vet probies, and maybe won’t even get that far if enough people take the DRP 2.0. I don’t know what will happen, but that’s my hopeful speculation.

AI hallucination is a nonissue in this context. It hallucinates because it's allowed to do so. There are products that do not hallucinate, such as that provided by Lexis. The hallucination that you hear about in briefs and the news is because folks are using products like off the shelf GPT, which has no parameters that would prevent the hallucination. I was using AI before I joined BVA, and am a strong proponent for its rollout at BVA.

BVA is literally decades behind what the rest of the legal community is doing in terms of doc review, de-duplicating, predictive coding, analysis, etc.

I’m hopeful that in the next 10 years, BVA will widely implement AI to adjudicate cases. If all goes well, BVA can reduce attorney headcount to 100 experienced attorneys to conduct quality reviews of AI decisions.

What joke. Let’s just decide every case by coin toss then. AI can’t practice law.

Isn't it already basically a coin toss?