Artificial intelligence and getting public benefits

I’m still an AI skeptic, at least of many of the claims that are out there. Remember how the internet itself was going to totally remake our lives, like “paperless offices,” the total end of traditional retailing, etc., etc? (Though certainly some people made a great deal of money from pronouncements like that being taken very seriously. Other people lost a great deal of money, too.) We will have to deal with AI, of sorts, in some ways, though.

One critical area that will almost certainly see dramatic changes in the years ahead is that of accessing public benefits programs — a realm already fraught with systemic barriers. While AI brings great potential to streamline burdensome processes and expand access to critical services, it also poses significant risks if deployed without care. As we stand at the precipice of an AI revolution, it’s critical that policymakers, tech companies and advocates work collectively to steer these technologies towards empowering people in need, rather than further isolating them. The promise is real, but far from guaranteed.

These developments come at a moment of growing recognition of how critical a robust, accessible safety net is to building and maintaining a prosperous society. Analysis on the expansion of the child tax credit during the Covid-19 pandemic found that increasing the benefit amount and making it available to more people lifted 3.7 million children out of poverty. In contrast, the addition of work requirements to enroll in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as food stamps), as proposed by Congressional Republicans early this year, would have reduced enrollment by an estimated 52% if it had been enacted, by making it more difficult for families in need to access the benefits. Given that SNAP is credited with keeping 3.3 million children out of poverty every year, this change would have drastically increased the number of children in poverty. These outcomes have major ramifications, not just for the families involved, but for society at large, as the long-term impact of child poverty has been calculated to cost more than $1 trillion every year. - In These Times