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The Dangers of Automating Social Programs

By Esther Shein
Communications of the ACM, October 2018, Vol. 61 No. 10, Pages 17-19
10.1145/3264627
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wheelchair on crumbling path, illustration — Credit: The Verge

Ask poverty attorney Joanna Green Brown for an example of a client who fell through the cracks and lost social services benefits they may have been eligible for because of a program driven by artificial intelligence (AI), and you will get an earful.

There was the "highly educated and capable" client who had had heart failure and was on a heart and lung transplant wait list. The questions he was presented in a Social Security benefits application "didn't encapsulate his issue" and his child subsequently did not receive benefits.

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