Incident 100: How French welfare services are creating ‘robo-debt’

Description: A French welfare office using software to automatically evaluate cases incorrectly notified a woman receiving benefits that she owed €542.

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Alleged: unknown developed an AI system deployed by French Welfare Offices, which harmed Lucie Inland.

Incident Stats

Incident ID
100
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2021-03-17
Editors
Sean McGregor, Khoa Lam

Incident Reports

How French welfare services are creating ‘robo-debt’
algorithmwatch.org · 2021

I live alone and, like many of my generation, I am part of the precariat. As such, I receive several social benefits. The welfare office pays part of my rent and gives me a monthly stipend, which totals about 500€ a month. I’ve been working…

Variants

A "variant" is an incident that shares the same causative factors, produces similar harms, and involves the same intelligent systems as a known AI incident. Rather than index variants as entirely separate incidents, we list variations of incidents under the first similar incident submitted to the database. Unlike other submission types to the incident database, variants are not required to have reporting in evidence external to the Incident Database. Learn more from the research paper.

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