On October 22, 2015, MIT Technology Review published a piece called, “Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill”.

It’s hard to imagine the degree of academic detachment required to reduce a philosophical quandary to the level of computer programming and to anthropomorphize said computer and the programs it runs to the extent that a life-and-death scenario could be blithely characterized as:

an impossible ethical dilemma of algorithmic morality.

But that’s exactly what happened because:

Jean-Francois Bonnefon at the Toulouse School of Economics in France and a couple of pals … say that even though there is no right or wrong answer to these questions, public opinion will play a strong role in how, or even whether, self-driving cars become widely accepted.

And professor Bonnefon and his fellow academics concluded:

People are in favor of cars that sacrifice the occupant to save other lives—as long they don’t have to drive one themselves.

After reading that article, we found ourselves walking, biking, and taking public transportation for fear of coming up on the short end to some algorithmic morality controlling a self-driving killing machine. But we eventually got over ourselves.

Fast Forward

Since then, of course, self-driving cars have become all the rage, with some predicable results. Nevertheless, the May/June edition of NU Claims features an article entitled, “Autonomous Vehicles: Predictions vs. Truth”. The article said this, in part:

Autonomous technology doesn’t just apply to private passenger vehicles. With the shortage of truck drivers, having autonomous technology would allow goods to be moved across the country on a 24-hour basis. The autonomous trucks could keep moving without the need to stop for drivers to rest … the size of the vehicle and the logistics of turning and navigating in traffic bring a different element to the task at hand.

When we read that, we couldn’t help thinking of the 1971 Steve Spielberg film, Duel. In a latter-day version, of course, the truck wouldn’t be driven by a dude with terminal road rage. Rather, it would be directed an algorithmic morality programmed to kill. We’ve come a long way, baby.

After reading the article, we couldn’t decide who we’d least like to be: The guy who comes up on the short end of a car programmed to kill. The actuaries who have to work with algorithmic morality to calculate risk probabilities. Or the underwriters who have to throw darts at the wall to determine risk levels until there’s enough claims history to rate and price coverages with any reasonable degree of plausibility, to say nothing of profitability.

This is the kind of thing that give the phrase, brave new world, entirely new meaning.

In the middle of March, Insurance Thought Leadership published a post called, “‘No-Code’ Goes Mainstream”. The post offered this time-sensitive admonition:

It’s time to take a hard look at no-code–generating computer programs without the need for programmers–which could streamline business processes and slash costs … No-code takes programming to the next level [no indication of what level we’re on now], because it lets even us non-technical types do that sort of grabbing of objects to assemble apps that make computers do what we want them to do — without having to wait for the IT department to have resources for us and without having to translate our current processes and our desires into some language that they can turn into code.

Like cloud computing (as we suggested in our previous post), much of the hard looking is already being done or has been done.

OOPs

The grabbing of objects mentioned in the Insurance Thought Leadership post refers to object-oriented programming (OOP), which develops software programs as simple, reusable pieces of code blueprints (usually called classes) that are used to create individual instances of objects, rather than necessitating the repetition of individual lines of code. While OOP wasn’t new in the immediate aftermath of Y2K, it was more widely adopted thereafter, along with programming languages like Python and Ruby, as suggested in this historical artifact, which says this, in part:

In particular, the newer generation of programmers wasn’t looking back into the labyrinth of COBOL, ForTran, DB2, and other ancient procedural languages. Rather, they were looking ahead into the as-yet unstructured lexicon of declarative query languages like SQL, JavaScript, and the programming equivalent of Esperanto-XML-that permitted greater functional literacy.

Since that artifact was published almost 22 years ago, it can’t come as any surprise that no-code programming has also been around for a while.

What’s In a Name

To make an arguably self-serving point, our Design Studio offers users no-code/low-code for implementation of the Finys Suite. It’s the exact same toolset our developers and designers use. It enables insurers to be self-sufficient, responsive, and competitive by letting them design and configure their own products. It also lets business users and IT departments collaborate to design, configure, and manage the Suite — as well as states and lines of business — more quickly and less expensively.

Maybe we could have called it No-Code Studio. But Design Studio sounds more elegant. And yes, it’s in the cloud.

As Ted Nugent would say, “Ya gotta love that.”

Those of you who aren’t mathematically inclined may not be aware of the fact that today, March 14 (3.14), is International Pi (π) Day.

Pi is a mathematical constant — derived from the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter — roughly equal to 3.14159; although, its decimal representation never settles into a permanently repeating pattern and is allegedly infinite. We say allegedly infinite because that’s never been factually proven. With one exception, everyone who’s attempted the proof has died of old age. The exception was Wilbur Freemish from Baked, Alaska. Wilbur’s wife, Agnes, found him unresponsive at his desk. The autopsy revealed he’d aspirated some seeds from a slice of raspberry pie he was eating as he calculated.

When Agnes was brought into Police HQ for a preliminary interview, she blurted out, “It serves the chooch right. All he ever did was play with those damn numbers!” Agnes was never considered a suspect in Wilbur’s demise. But her statement wouldn’t have mattered, either way, because the cops weren’t recording the interview or listening to Agnes. They were working on their own decimal representations for pi.

Oops

At any rate, due to poor communication and current supply-chain shortages, the first announcement of International Pi Day caused a panicked market run on apples, peaches, blueberries, strawberries, rhubarb, chocolate, custard, banana cream, lemon meringue, and key limes. There were no shortages of mince, of course, because no one actually likes mince pie.

On hearing of the confusion, the International Mathematical Union issued the following statement:

It is with deep regret that we acknowledge the besmirching of our beloved π. Without it, the areas and circumferences of innumerable circles would remain unknown to us to this very day. As a boon to trigonometry and physics, π has spawned countless formulae, especially as they pertain to ellipses and spheres. Let it be noted, as well, that pi occurs in various mathematical problems involving the lengths of arcs or other curves, the areas of sectors and other curved surfaces, and the volumes of many solids. It’s used in various formulae to describe such periodic phenomena as the motion of pendulums, the vibration of strings, and alternating electric currents. And in the field of entertainment, π was a foundational element in classic performances of the Three Stooges.

No matter how you choose to celebrate International Pi Day, we hope you enjoy it.

But watch out for the raspberry seeds.

After seeing a sizable number of articles and posts about the application of no-code/low-code (NC/LC) development in insurance, we recently conducted a Google search on that precise topic — no code/low code in insurance. The search yielded 4,920,000,000 hits, leading us to the conclusion that the topic might not be that new or novel. One of the hits we got was an article from the research and evaluation firm, AIMultiple, entitled, “Impact of the Low/No-Code Platforms on the Insurance Sector”. It said this, in part:

Low/no-code practices democratize and accelerate the software development process thanks to their graphical interface that reduces or eliminates the need to write code. It is an opportunity for insurers, pushing them to develop solutions that solve their business problems quickly … By using low/no-code development, insurance companies can:

• Decrease sunk costs of their IT investments significantly,
• Quickly adapt to the changing environment,
• Increase their operational efficiency by eliminating the negative effects of skills differentials among their employees.

We don’t mean to be arrogant. But it was by precisely that logic, for exactly those reasons, that we introduced our Design Studio in 2018. It comprises the exact same toolset our developers and designers use. And it’s built on a no-code platform

SOS

The subhead above isn’t the familiar distress signal. Rather it’s the abbreviation for Shiny Object Syndrome. We understand technology companies have marketing jobs to do to attract interest in their products. We understand consultants have technologies to tout to attract interest in their services. We understand the trade media have sales jobs to do to attract readers and advertisers to their publications. And we understand some chasms are wider and take longer to cross than others. So, we appreciate the fact that some things are hyped beyond their sell-by dates.

But sometimes we can’t help but wish that the trade media would publicize what’s real and in use, just as we wish the news media would publicize the good news that takes place and the good deeds that are being done every day.

We’re familiar with the journalistic phrase, if it bleeds, it leads. And we know sensationalism sells.

But sliced bread, bottled beer, and NC/LC have been done. We can be more creative than this.

In an article we published in the Fall 2020 edition of the The Demotech Difference — “The Importance of Sound Implementations” — we wrote this:

Turnover is the equivalent of corporate amnesia.

We recalled that recently because there seems to be a spate of updates of late telling us about leadership turnover in the vendor community of which we’re a proud member. And it seems as if many of the folks coming into those leadership positions are from outside the insurance industry. Please don’t misunderstand us: We completely understand the desire for new blood, fresh ideas, varied perspectives, and deliberately defying complacency. But we don’t understand how companies can sacrifice that much intellectual capital and still remain viable and competitive.

Let’s Sharpen the Point

Turnover of any kind diminishes continuity. Replacing people with folks from outside the industry would also diminish domain experience, industry knowledge, process familiarity, troubleshooting and problem-solving experience, organizational cohesiveness, and reliable interdependencies — to name just a few. And would that leave organizations that diminish themselves with constant turnover and repeated hiring from outside the industry in a perpetual state of x-steps-ahead-x-steps back?

It may boil down to an overall lack of insurance operational expertise. If I’ve led and auto-racing team and I’m appointed to lead an insurance software company, I likely won’t understand the deliberate way the industry moves forward and embraces change. The fact is not many executives from outside the industry understand that until it’s too late, until after they’ve made commitments to the their customers. That creates panic, wasted time, financial losses, and diminishing returns when they realize they were overly optimistic. With no knowledge of the history of the company, its successes and failure, and the decisions that led to both, leaders with no industry experience are being set up to fail. So are their customers.

Realistically speaking, how do you sell that? How can you make an argument for organizational stability and credibility if you’re announcing the fact that the organization lacks stability and credibility? We recognize those are tough questions. But we aren’t aware that anyone else is asking them.

Let’s Do the Math

Even if those kinds of losses of experience, continuity, and intellectual capital don’t have direct costs (we think they must), they have opportunity costs, at the very least. What’s the cost of strategic directives that aren’t realistic — or simply may not work — because they suffer from a lack of understanding of the problems carriers face.

We’re absolutely sure this must make some kind of sense to someone. But it doesn’t make sense to us. On the other hand, what do we know?

Is there anything like a continuity cost? We’d have to say we’re not sure.

But we’re positive a lack of continuity has a very large price tag.