So, Philip the subject of your lecture this evening is, "Making the Digital Welfare State
Work for People." In your report on the United Kingdom as special rapporteur on extreme poverty
and human rights, you had a number of criticisms of what you call the disappearance of the
welfare states behind the digital welfare state. Can you just say a few words about
those criticisms?
Well, the UK has had a very deliberate strategy to transform quote, governance, throughout the
country in digital terms, and the big effort, the big push has actually come in the welfare area.
So, the digital-by-default nature of universal credit is actually an overstatement in the
sense that it's really close to digital-by-compulsion. So, if people want to get universal credit, want
to get access to their benefits, they have to go online, they have to be able to operate
a computer, they have to have access to the internet, and they then have to continue to
engage with the Department of Work and Pensions on a very regular basis electronically.
But, what sort of problems does that really pose in terms of access? How many people,
what kinds of people are affected by that change?
Well, the Department is relatively dismissive or over optimistic, saying, "Look, most
people can do this, it's not a problem. For those few who can't, we'll take care of it."
That's not the picture that you get if you look at, there's a Lloyd's survey of consumer
access to the internet, there's Ofcom surveys of the extent to which people have difficulty
accessing electronic databases and so on. And, what you find is that there are significant
percentages. Now, that might only be ten percent, but of all the people, significantly higher
percentages of people with disabilities, even in the youth group 16 - 24, there's a lot
of difficulty of access to the internet. So, in fact, there are quite large segments of
the community who are potentially either excluded or at least prejudiced by having to be online
on a very regular basis for benefit purposes.
So, one issue is access to the necessary infrastructure, but do your concerns about so-called digital
welfare or the use of technology such as artificial intelligence go wider than that?
I think there's no doubt that these new technologies have immense potential, I'm not opposed to
them at all. I think they should be used to the full. I think what we see in the digital
area, is that they've been overwhemingly used in a negative way. Governments and others
see them as an opportunity to cut back on welfare budgets, not to make them smarter,
not to make them better targeted, but rather to produce large savings to pursue other agendas,
such as the fraud prevention agenda, which looks neutral on its face, but in fact is
driven by an ideology that tries to discredit welfare. It's driven also by a privatisation
agenda, because so much of this work is outsourced, it goes to companies, or it's actually privatised.
That takes government more out of the picture than it was. I think that the
basic concern I have is with the way in which the digital welfare state is being implemented.
So, you focus on in your UK report on initiatives here, but is your sense that this is a trend
that is wider than the UK, is worldwide?
At New York University Law School, we've set up a project called, "The Digital Welfare
State and Human Rights," and it's driven precisely by the realisation that in a very wide range
of states, these issues are becoming more and more prominent. Whether it's Aadhaar in
India, whether it's the new biometric recognition system in Kenya, whether it's a number of
developments in Australia, whether it's the Siri system in the Netherlands, there are
many different manifestations, but it's the same general set of issues. There's a lot
of experimentation, particularly with the poor, because they're the most vulnerable,
they're the ones who have to provide data to the government. These systems are ever
more intrusive and demanding, they provide an opportunity for government to really control
in ways that we wouldn't contemplate for the rest of the population. So, I think there
are a lot of major concerns with the way in which these digital welfare states are evolving.
One of the observations you make in your report on the UK, in which you made elsewhere is
you think that the discussion of the present about the ethics of AI is inadequate to help
us really grapple with the consequences of this kind of technological development.
Why is human rights law fit for purpose?
I think ethics is completely open-ended, I'm sorry to say that, but it's basically in the
eye of the beholder. What we have are the major tech companies as the key players in
the development of various ethical codes adopted in different contexts. These ethical codes
will almost always acknowledge human rights, not always, but usually, upfront somewhere,
human rights are important. That's the end of human rights. From then on, it's a pretty
open-ended list of various criteria of fairness and transparency and openness and whatever.
But, these have no solid meaning, no clear definition, there's certainly not matters
of law, and of course, the tech companies will say, "Well, human rights is out of date.
They're not flexible enough. We need to be able to move faster and more quickly and to
adapt, etc. Human rights are yesterday's benchmark." I think that is basically leaving the tech
companies, as they want, with a carte blanche where they determine what are the main principles
that are going to govern their own activities. It means we move away from the state, it means
we move away from any agreed conception of what the basic values are. It's true that
human rights language is not written in a way that can very readily be applied to a lot
of the very sophisticated settings in the tech area, but we just have to adapt them
and make them fit for purpose, but they remain the bedrock foundation that should be used
rather than simply side stepped, which is what's happening now.
So, one last question, in your on-going project on the digital welfare state, do you anticipate
developing interpretations or refinements of human rights law that might well be able
to be used in the design of some of these new digital systems?
I think there's a challenge in getting the right mix between the universal and the local.
In other words, I would certainly like to see the universal human rights regime made
more appropriate and like it to become more conscious, more sophisticated in relation
to these matters, but it's also true that a lot of this is local. The system that's
going to work in India, the protections that are needed there, the system of accountability
and so, is going to look quite different from that in the United Kingdom or Australia.
Okay, thank you very much.
My pleasure.