AI Is Already Damaging Beneficiaries In NZ
We told you this was already happening…
Government uses Budget urgency to pass bill allowing the automation of welfare decisions
The Government is paving the way for automated decision-making within the social security system.
A bill, which has been making its way through Parliament on Friday, will allow the Ministry of Social Development to approve the use of automated decision-making (ADM) for certain functions.
Social Development Minister Louise Upston has assured opposition MPs that ADM will only be used for simple binary decisions.
But the way the bill is drafted is broad – it would allow ADM for any social assistance programmes and any statutory powers, duties or functions exercised by the Ministry.
Stuff
…Beneficiaries are always the lab rats for how far the State thinks it can bend human rights.
Beneficiaries are already under a level of mass surveillance we wouldn’t agree with if used on us.
Beneficiaries are already facing automated decision-making. The Government changed the rules around welfare, forcing beneficiaries to reapply every six months rather than annually, and because the agencies don’t have enough staff to process those applications, they are now allowing automated systems to do it.
They are guinea pigs in this experiment and that experiment is already working for the Government by slashing $55 million from the poorest…
$55 million less in benefit payments as Govt automates welfare decisions under urgency
It comes as new figures in the Budget reveal the Government expects to pay out $55 million less in benefits over the next four years as a result of the automation drive.
Green Party social development spokesperson Ricardo Menéndez March said the legislation would make it harder for people to access benefits and get paid the amounts they need.
Newsroom
…nothing comforts a struggling family like a chatbot saying ‘Have you tried not being poor?’
“Nicola Willis thinks AI can handle mental health support — because when you’re at your lowest, nothing hits quite like a machine asking you to rate your despair out of five.
National’s dream is a fully automated public service: no public, no service, and best of all, no one left to explain why it’s not working.
Automated decision-making doesn’t replace bureaucracy. It replaces accountability.
A binary decision could be anything. Do you get an allowance? Yes or no. Do you get a food grant? Yes or no. Are you going to be sanctioned? Yes or no. Claiming they’ll only let the machine handle binary decisions is absolutely not the safeguard they want you to believe it is. Robodebt made binary decisions all day long. It just happened to be wrong a lot of the time and caused Centrelink “clients” to succumb to suicidal depression and off themselves. When they tried to dispute the algorithm’s determination, they were essentially told the machine doesn’t lie, or make mistakes, shut up and pay the imaginary money you owe. It’s was a draconian shit-show of epic proportions and cost actual human lives.
No surprises at all Louise “$52,000” Upston is a big fan of this dystopian nightmare.