I watched the recorded Jepson Forum Talk from February of this year by Virginia Eubanks, entitled “Algorithms, Austerity, and Inequality”. Virginia Eubanks is political science professor at University of Albany SUNY and author, notably of “Automating Inequality” which was the focus of her talk. Eubanks starts the talk describing what a poorhouse is, which was an actual building that people in the 1800’s had to go to, to get any public aid. Once you arrived at a poorhouse you had to surrender your rights to vote, own property, marry, and if you had children you were separated from them, so checking into a poorhouse was a major choice. She discusses how the technology and big data tools that our nation has implemented in choosing who gets recourses and who does not has created a “digital poorhouse” which is an invisible institution that is comprised of digital decision-making algorithms. Eubanks states that the high-tech tools that are used to measure effectiveness, and eligibility for social welfare programs are used to “recreate and rationalize austerity, proport to address bias in decision making (but really just hide it) and create empathy overrides for difficult decisions”. She states that one of the main reasons poorhouses were created in the 1800’s and why there are such problems with social welfare programs today is the idea of austerity; which is the idea that there is not enough for everyone and that we have to make difficult decisions about who should be able to make their basic human needs and who shouldn’t.

Eubanks shares the stories of multiple families and individuals that have been negatively impacted by the automation of the eligibility for social welfare programs, and the outsourcing of the case workers that used to be able to have more empathy for the families. The automation of the system has not only prevented well deserving people from getting the aid that they need, but also wasted millions of dollars creating the online programs, money that could have gone to families in need. Additionally, she discusses the justification that the technology gets rid of bias is making it worse for minorities. The system she discusses records all of the state aid that families need, and if they get reported for doing something wrong it is from a bystander, who can racially profile, not the machine. Also, by leaving these hard decisions to computers that could change people’s lives is a way for the people running the programs not to deal with the bad feelings they get from denying people basic aid. Finally, Eubanks ends the talk with discussing what we can do to end this negative feedback loop that the digitalized programs have created. She says that the US needs to tell a vastly different story of poverty in the country than they do now. Today there are millions of Americans that deal with poverty, although the majority temporary, it is not due to the classic lazy person taking advantage of the government picture that we all have learned about. The fact that so many people deal with this the main reason why this system needs to be fixed. Additionally, everyone thinks that technology is neutral, but it is neutral it will support the current status quo. When building technology for social welfare programs it needs to be built justly on purpose. Overall, the problems of this system have to do with the leadership involved. The people leading all of these programs are middle to upper class who have no idea what the poor people really need. This talk really opened my eyes to see how large this problem is in our country and how desperately it needs to be fixed.