<story><title>Digital dystopia: how algorithms punish the poor</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/14/automating-poverty-algorithms-punish-poor</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>benjaminjosephw</author><text>&amp;gt; Automating Poverty will run all week. If you have a story to tell about being on the receiving end of the new digital dystopia, email ed.pilkington@theguardian.com&lt;p&gt;This is dangourous journalism. The reporter has clearly taken a stance and is not attempting to open up a nuanced and careful discussion of the factors at play here but is instead insighting fear and mistrust of technical progress in the public sphere.&lt;p&gt;I can understand the fear and concern around the changing digital landscapes and the potential impact on different parts of society. What&amp;#x27;s needed is a public discourse about these things that doesn&amp;#x27;t conflate the issues into one single problem of a &amp;quot;digital dystopia&amp;quot;. Are we really talking about a &amp;quot;flawed algorithm&amp;quot;, for example, or simply the encoding of a badly designed government process?&lt;p&gt;Technology _is_ changing how poor people interact with the state and this is an important topic to discuss openly and broadly. We&amp;#x27;ll never have the quality of discussion that&amp;#x27;s needed while there are fear mongering reporters like this subverting that conversation to the level of luddism.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Sileni</author><text>I go back and forth on the value of a &amp;quot;devil&amp;#x27;s advocate&amp;quot;. I hope someone else will chime in to help me out if I don&amp;#x27;t explain this eloquently.&lt;p&gt;This is a case where I believe the topic won&amp;#x27;t be properly discussed unless someone is willing to take a hard stance on the negative side. Someone has to point out all the potential failings of the system that so many people are pouring their lives into building. Even if that person ends up taking a much harder stance than they actually believe in, and becoming a little too disconnected from reality.&lt;p&gt;The situations being described in the article are horrifying, and sound an awful lot like what you might expect from software bugs in their early stages. That wouldn&amp;#x27;t be a problem if there was an appropriate human force behind the systems going online, but we&amp;#x27;ve all seen stakeholders push systems into production before they&amp;#x27;re ready without adequate support.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;re probably on the right track to call it a &amp;quot;badly designed government process&amp;quot;, but I&amp;#x27;d wager the human element is what softened the blow from that bureaucracy. It shifts the burden of proof from the case worker to the support seeker. It changes the conversation from &amp;quot;You think you deserve benefits? Let&amp;#x27;s look over your evidence&amp;quot; to &amp;quot;You&amp;#x27;ve already been rejected, why should we support you?&amp;quot;. When you&amp;#x27;re talking about people surviving, that&amp;#x27;s a significant difference.</text></comment>
<story><title>Digital dystopia: how algorithms punish the poor</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/oct/14/automating-poverty-algorithms-punish-poor</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>benjaminjosephw</author><text>&amp;gt; Automating Poverty will run all week. If you have a story to tell about being on the receiving end of the new digital dystopia, email ed.pilkington@theguardian.com&lt;p&gt;This is dangourous journalism. The reporter has clearly taken a stance and is not attempting to open up a nuanced and careful discussion of the factors at play here but is instead insighting fear and mistrust of technical progress in the public sphere.&lt;p&gt;I can understand the fear and concern around the changing digital landscapes and the potential impact on different parts of society. What&amp;#x27;s needed is a public discourse about these things that doesn&amp;#x27;t conflate the issues into one single problem of a &amp;quot;digital dystopia&amp;quot;. Are we really talking about a &amp;quot;flawed algorithm&amp;quot;, for example, or simply the encoding of a badly designed government process?&lt;p&gt;Technology _is_ changing how poor people interact with the state and this is an important topic to discuss openly and broadly. We&amp;#x27;ll never have the quality of discussion that&amp;#x27;s needed while there are fear mongering reporters like this subverting that conversation to the level of luddism.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>0-_-0</author><text>In addition, there is nothing in the article to support the point it&amp;#x27;s trying to make. Not a single number to compare against. It says &amp;quot;new thing X is bad&amp;quot;, while it should be saying &amp;quot;New thing X is worse than old thing Y and here is how that was measured&amp;quot;. Otherwise how should I know if a similar article could have been written about how &amp;quot;old thing Y is bad&amp;quot;. Surely, humans making decisions about welfare is also error prone and much more resource intensive, and the job of a journalist would be to make the comparison.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m interested in facts, not opinions completely lacking in (and separated from) facts.</text></comment>