How Australia Used Tech Against Welfare Recipients w/ Dhakshayini Sooriyakumaran

Tech Won't Save Us

Paris Marx

Silicon Valley, Books, Technology, Arts, Future, Tech Criticism, Socialism, Paris Marx, News, Criticism, Tech News, Politics

4.8 • 626 Ratings

🗓️ 5 August 2021

⏱️ 41 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Paris Marx is joined by Dhakshayini Sooriyakumaran to discuss Australia’s robodebt scandal where automated decision-making was used against welfare recipients, and how exploitative AI implementations are being deployed by governments in social welfare and at the borders. Dhakshayini Sooriyakumaran is a proud Tamil person and a PhD candidate at Australian National University whose work focuses on digital identification systems and border policing regimes. Follow Dhakshayini on Twitter as @Dha...

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	The welfare system is inherently punitive.
0:03.0	So when you increase efficiency in a punitive system, there's only going to be one result. Hello and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us.
0:27.1	I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Dukshayni Soria Kumaran.
0:31.6	Dukshayini is a PhD candidate at Australian National University, and she recently wrote a piece
0:36.8	about the exploitative
0:37.8	implementations of artificial intelligence tools in government systems called resisting robo
0:44.2	governance. In this week's conversation, we talk about Australia's experience with what was called
0:49.0	Robo Debt, a program by the government to use artificial intelligence to try to crack down on what they
0:55.6	called welfare fraud, but actually subjected welfare recipients to false debts that they did not
1:02.1	actually owe, and then forced them to fight often for months, if not years, to try to get
1:08.1	these false debts overturned. And obviously, during that period,
1:12.2	a lot of people experience a lot of stress as they had to prove that they didn't actually
1:17.8	owe these debts to the government. I think this is a really important case that people outside
1:23.2	of Australia should understand, which is why I'm happy to be doing this episode today.
1:32.4	But we also talk about the broader implementations and the broader scope of these kind of programs and how they're proposed for other kind of social benefits, but are also deployed
1:38.2	on the borders in society and toward migrants. I think it's really important that we be
1:43.6	paying attention to the deployment
1:45.7	of these kinds of technologies because they start by targeting some of the most disadvantaged
1:50.9	people in our societies before eventually being turned on us too. So I think this is a really
1:57.5	important conversation. And I just want to note before we get started,
2:05.6	at one point, Dax Cheney talks about Scott Morrison. And if you're not familiar with Australian politics, he is the prime minister of Australia. And at the end, Dukshayini says that if anyone
2:11.1	is working on, you know, similar issues, they can feel free to reach out to her. Obviously,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Paris Marx, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Paris Marx and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.