HERE IT COMES
Ministry of Social Development to use basic AI to regrant benefits
Opponents of a law change fear it will create a legal loophole allowing the use of artificial intelligence to cut benefits and impose sanctions on beneficiaries.
But the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) said it does not plan to use generative AI or automated decision making in that way.
A new clause in the Social Services Amendment Bill, which has passed its first reading, vastly expands the decisions that can be made by automated systems to include sanctions.
Cabinet has agreed to introduce a suite of new obligations and sanctions for job seekers this year.
The Salvation Army is warning that if the door opens for AI to decide benefit sanctions, it cannot be easily closed.
Policy analyst Ana Ika said the organisation opposes the government’s amended bill, which would allow more sanctions under the traffic light system as well as paving the way for AI to make more decisions on benefits.
“The bill will make things a lot worse for those that we support, it will push a lot more people into poverty. It will create a lot more barriers and difficulties for those that we support to be able to access the help that they need.”
She said a clause expanding AI opened the door for the ministry to automate decisions relating to sanctions.
“If you open this legal loophole here, how far can you take it? AI is artificial, but it’s not that intelligent – the intelligent part is still being worked out, but because of that there are decisions that could be made that are unfair, that does marginalise those who are on the fringes of society and makes things a lot worse.”
Both the Salvation Army and Law Society have called for the clause to be scrapped, in submissions to the select committee considering the bill.
The Salvation Army’s submission stated that automatic decision making “cannot account for the complexities we often see in the individuals we support”, such as financial hardship, addictions, mental health issues or unstable living conditions.
“Automated systems risk making inappropriate decisions that could increase hardship for those we support,” it said.
MSD said it plans to use basic AI to decide whether people applying to renew their Jobseeker benefit have met their obligations, but automative decision-making would not be used to decline these.
Under the proposed changes, people on this benefit would have to re-apply every six months – instead of annually.
Just as TDB warned you, big data fascism is here.
MSD are attempting to make life as difficult as possible for beneficiaries and are forcing them to reapply every 6months rather than annually. MSD don’t want to hire the extra staff to process those extra work requirement check ups, so they are fucking handing it over to AI.
Jesus fucking wept!
AI trawling your social media feeds to see if you are well enough to work and cutting you off if it decides you are.
This is the horror that Bill English and the company his daughter owns are bringing in with their Big Data Social Investment model.
I have deep fears that removing 7AA from Oranga Tamariki will green light a tsunami of uplifts and create another lost generation of Māori kids.
The Social Investment Model uses big data algorithms to pinpoint when a child needs uplifting. For it to work properly and deliver the savings downstream to the State, the uplift must be as soon as Orac tells the State to uplift.
When they switch it on, it is going to generate an enormous tsunami of uplifts.
Removing 7AA removes the requirement for OT to talk to Māori, which is a green light for mass uplifts.
Placing uplifted Māori children into Māori Community Groups rather than the statistically likely abuse within State care is an actual solution (as long as the funding follows the child).
What ACT, National and NZ First are really fighting for here is to turn Orac on and let the magic of AI determine which child gets uplifted and which one doesn’t!
Think of it as a cross between Kindergarten Cop, Minority Report and The Handmaid’s Tale.
If the realty of this hard Right Government gaining the power to use AI to invade your life and rip children from parents doesn’t scare the bejesus out of you, I don’t know what will.
The State taking a child from a parent is the most extreme power imbalance we have in a liberal progressive society. If we uplift children into State care where they statistically stand to be abuse more than if they had been left in the community, you have a very damaged and broken system that requires more oversight, not less!
What the Social Investment Model intends to do is unapologetically supercharge the uplift process and weaponise it against those Orac warns us will cost the State more money down stream.
We need more oversight here, not less and the willingness of this Government to embark upon this radical yet invisible welfare experiment should be ringing alarm bells everywhere.
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If a politician could accept an ai to determine if they get in or kicked out of the parliament then a beneficiary might accept they could have their income controlled by an ai.
Maybe we just get rid of paliament and just have AI ,cOULD IT BE ANY WORSE ?
I reckon one of the times that felt best in the last 30 years was when Winston took six weeks after an election to jump to the left or jump the right. Meanwhile everyone just got on with it without the parliamentary overlords.
But the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) said it does not plan to use generative AI or automated decision making in that way.
But that is today, and perhaps the next six months – but then? Reconsideration. And then a new head of MSD who has more hair than wit as the saying goes, but maybe none at all. And either gender or trans. As Marx and Engel said in their great manifesto :
…The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world-market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes…
In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature….
Excerpt from The Communist Manifesto
Penguin Random House Canada
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca › books › excerpt
Excerpt. From The Communist Manifesto. Author Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Introduction by Martin Malia Afterword by Stephen Kotkin.
Say blah blah – not interested. Go and jump you yokel, you nit-wit. It’s the best blah you can read as Marx and Engels put their minds and knowledge and understanding over years to it. Amazing stuff – but remember that Marx said he wasn’t a Marxist. He didn’t set up what has been done in his name.
How many times has public policy based on number crunching resulted in ‘what can be counted ends up what counts’? Quantification helps but its not the full picture. Big data and AI-generated understandings are the beginning of a slippery slope.
This is a steady process of eroding global Democracies already happening, boiling the frog slowly.
“How a Digital Coup Works”
https://youtu.be/TZOoT8AbkNE
The State cannot even take responsibility for its own actions, when those actions are done by humans, as evidenced in the abuse in care inquiry, where the State was complicit in the most depraved crimes perpetrated against the most vulnerable, up to 250k lives damaged or ruined at the hands of the State, and then systematically covered up, at all levels from law enforcement to child services to health authorities, all the way up to the Solicitor General. In a supposed low corruption country, this is as corrupt as it can possibly get.
So now in addition to all the standard underhanded tactics, that included MSD hiring private investigators to dig up dirt on victims of abuse, the addition of Artificial Intelligence will reduce the States responsibility for its actions even further. If the A.I. decides something, which human will have responsibility, when things go wrong. The State should fix up past mess first, by getting A.I. to trace the perpetrators and those that covered up previous abuse, and incarcerate them. Put right first what needs putting right. Uncover first, what shouldn’t be covered up. Do what you were supposed to do in the first place, instead of doing the least. Having the abuse in care inquiry, was the least the govt could do, but at least it was something done during Labours watch. Bill English wouldn’t have even allowed the inquiry to happen, he wouldn’t have even been able to do the least. But if the A.I. driven social investment big data hokus pokus, can damage people and society even further, the govt spin on it will be that it was a great success, just like Seymour’s school lunches, just like Nicola’s ferry fiasco.
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