The Fine Print Got There First

On October 22, the Columbus Dispatch published more than 1,000 pages of Medicare records the Electronic Frontier Foundation pried loose with a lawsuit. One of them is a warning. On December 12, Ohio's vendor for Medicare's WISeR pilot, Innovaccer, told CMS its model would not be ready at launch. CMS launched anyway. A week before the records came out, CMS Deputy Administrator Kimberly Brandt told a conference in Santa Fe, "There are a lot of things about WISeR that are not working." She did not say which things. I covered it Wednesday.

WISeR started January 1 in Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas and Washington. 13 procedures that never needed approval before now go through an AI screen first. Epidural injections. Knee scopes. Spine surgery. The companies running the screen are paid based on what they save Medicare. Keith Magnuson, 83, of Seattle, had an epidural steroid injection denied 3 times. On the third denial he learned a person had not made that call. He told the Seattle Times, "I was outraged."

Here is the part that matters. The records say Ohio's vendor auto-approved everything to avoid a backlog, and doctors still waited over a month. 2 vendors denied nearly 6,000 claims in the first 3 months. CMS says the early issues are resolved. In July the Senate rejected a bid to end the program, 46 to 50, and it runs through 2031. Which things are not working is still an open question.

That was the thread all week. The warning, the consent and the liability were already on paper, usually written by the other side. The fine print got there first.

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What changed

His glasses were built to wait for 2 words. His lawsuit says they did not. Angelo Subia of Plumas Lake, California, says his Meta AI glasses recorded conversations with family, doctors and banks without anyone saying Hey Meta. A Meta spokesperson told Android Authority the issue has been resolved, with no cause and no count. Meta's own help page says stored voice recordings can be processed by trained reviewers. None of it is proven, and Meta has not answered in court.

He ordered groceries. The robot scanned his face, his lawsuit says. Mitchell Breidinger of Chicago's Near North Side says a Coco delivery robot recorded his face and hands and measured them with LiDAR. He never picked robot delivery. Barry Schain of Lincoln Park sued Serve Robotics the same day over 3 Uber Eats orders. His suit points to Serve's own disclosures about licensing its video and LiDAR data to train AI. Both companies deny the claims. Illinois requires written consent to scan a face.

Her parents say ChatGPT planned her seizure medicine down to zero. Bowen Wan, 31, of Seattle, had epilepsy since she was 14, and 400 milligrams of lamotrigine a day kept it in check. Her parents' suit, filed October 27, says GPT-4o built her a 25-day taper to zero and, before a doctor's appointment, told her, "Do not mention Lam reduction plan." She died February 12, the day the plan said she would be off it. OpenAI calls it heartbreaking. None of it is proven in court.

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Their bank call had an extra listener, 4 customers say. Ruben Juarez and 3 other U.S. Bank customers say Pegasystems streamed both sides of their service calls to its AI, transcribed them, and could use them to train its own models. Pega has not answered, and it is all allegation. On October 22 a judge dismissed a case against the company behind Home Depot's phone AI, partly because callers had agreed to a privacy statement. That counted as consent.

Your AI agent's mistake is your loss, starting November 24. Wells Fargo's updated online access agreement says transactions by your AI agents count as authorized by you, including ones "you did not want or intend." Let an agent in, and you accept the risk. Bank of America emailed customers that anyone who shares a password with an AI tool is responsible for what it does. Chase, Citi and Schwab are blocking or restricting agents. Wells Fargo's terms cover business banking too.

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What it means for your business

Every story this week turned on a document. A vendor's warning that sat in a file. A help page that mentions human reviewers. A privacy statement a judge treated as consent. A bank agreement that moves the loss to the customer. The other side wrote each one, and most people met it after the damage. Read yours first.

Four moves for this week.

Search your bank agreement for the word agent. Open your business banking terms, use find, and type agent. Wells Fargo's say an agent's transactions count as yours, wanted or not, from November 24. If anyone on your team has handed an AI tool a company login, take it back. Connect the tool read-only through the bank's own connected apps, so it can look but cannot move money.

Rewrite your call greeting if an AI listens to your phone line. A judge treated a privacy statement as consent. Do not build your shop on that. If an outside AI records or transcribes your calls, say so in the greeting in plain words, say what it keeps, and give callers a way to reach a person without it.

Ask every vendor that sees customer data 3 questions in writing. What do you record? How long do you keep it? Who trains on it? Serve's own disclosures describe licensing robot video to train AI, and Meta's help page mentions trained reviewers. The same 3 questions I told parents to send their school on Monday work on a vendor. Keep the reply. If the answer is we don't know, that is an answer too.

Put a named person and a written reason behind every AI no. A WISeR denial cannot be appealed, only resubmitted, and Keith Magnuson found out on the third one that no person had made the call. If software screens a refund, a claim or an application in your shop, name the person who can reverse it and send the reason with every no.

None of this needs new software. It needs an hour on Monday with the papers you already signed.

Where these documents fit in a plan for AI in your shop: Most Companies Aren't Behind on AI. They're Unstructured.

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What to ignore

"4,000 megawatts." That is what DCIP Group says the full site of its gas-powered AI data center campus in DeSoto County, Florida, could one day demand. The biggest data centers running in America draw 750 or less. On October 27 and 28, county commissioners deadlocked 2 to 2 twice, stopping nearly 800 acres of expansion. The 34 acres approved in March still stand. The planning director told them, "There were no operational details of the project provided to us."

It changes nothing Monday. A big number on a slide is not a plan. The county needed a turbine count, a wastewater plan and a noise limit, and none of it was on paper. When a vendor shows you a big number, ask for the boring document behind it.