Article by Gabriel Daros: “Brazil’s social security institute, known as INSS, added AI to its app in 2018 in an effort to cut red tape and speed up claims. The office, known for its long lines and wait times, had around 2 million pending requests for everything from doctor’s appointments to sick pay to pensions to retirement benefits at the time. While the AI-powered tool has since helped process thousands of basic claims, it has also rejected requests from hundreds of people like de Brito — who live in remote areas and have little digital literacy — for minor errors.
The government is right to digitize its systems to improve efficiency, but that has come at a cost, Edjane Rodrigues, secretary for social policies at the National Confederation of Workers in Agriculture, told Rest of World.
“If the government adopts this kind of service to speed up benefits for the people, this is good. We are not against it,” she said. But, particularly among farm workers, claims can be complex because of the nature of their work, she said, referring to cases that require additional paperwork, such as when a piece of land is owned by one individual but worked by a group of families. “There are many peculiarities in agriculture, and rural workers are being especially harmed” by the app, according to Rodrigues.
“Each automated decision is based on specified legal criteria, ensuring that the standards set by the social security legislation are respected,” a spokesperson for INSS told Rest of World. “Automation does not work in an arbitrary manner. Instead, it follows clear rules and regulations, mirroring the expected standards applied in conventional analysis.”
Governments across Latin America have been introducing AI to improve their processes. Last year, Argentina began using ChatGPT to draft court rulings, a move that officials said helped cut legal costs and reduce processing times. Costa Rica has partnered with Microsoft to launch an AI tool to optimize tax data collection and check for fraud in digital tax receipts. El Salvador recently set up an AI lab to develop tools for government services.
But while some of these efforts have delivered promising results, experts have raised concerns about the risk of officials with little tech know-how applying these tools with no transparency or workarounds…(More)”.