Description: Researchers have argued that the Department for Work and Pensions' Universal Credit system disproportionately impacts single mothers. Automated processes in the system, designed to determine eligibility and detect fraud, are reported to have introduced biases, leading to financial instability and hardship. The algorithms allegedly miscalculate earnings and delay childcare reimbursements, in turn exacerbating income volatility and debt among single mothers.
Entities
View all entitiesAlleged: Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) developed and deployed an AI system, which harmed Single mothers and British single mothers.
Incident Stats
Incident ID
740
Report Count
1
Incident Date
2024-07-10
Editors
Daniel Atherton
Incident Reports
Reports Timeline
mirror.co.uk · 2024
- View the original report at its source
- View the report at the Internet Archive
The Universal Credit system is disproportionately impacting working single mothers, it has been claimed.
Universal Credit is managed by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and is the most common UK benefit with 6.7million people clai…
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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