Automated Government Benefits and Welfare Surveillance

This article examines the “digital welfare state” historically, presently, and into the future, with a focus on what artificial intelligence means for welfare surveillance. Drawing on scholarship about the development of bureaucracy, the welfare state, and automation, as well as specific examples from the Netherlands, I argue that problems posed by artificial intelligence in public administration are often misplaced or misattributed and that the societal challenges we can expect to encounter in welfare surveillance are more likely to be historically familiar than technologically novel. New tec... Mehr ...