AI Solutionism - Three Questions and Two Answers

Prince William advocates using AI to monitor personal data for early homelessness detection, but critics argue this technosolution ignores proven solutions like affordable housing and risks punitive surveillance. The royal's $1.3 billion Duchy of Cornwall wealth highlights the irony of promoting AI fixes while benefiting from systems that perpetuate inequality.

When AI is presented as a miracle cure for all the ills of the world the first question I always ask is 'how else could we solve this problem?' More or less every time there's an answer waiting in that question, usually one which isn't just well known but often one which has been advocated for by those most inescapably tied to the issues in the first place. When Prince William says that AI is the solution to homelessness https://insiderpaper.com/prince-william-says-uk-homelessness-preventable-with-ai/ that fundamental question flashes by even more quickly. There are legions of homelessness campaigners, unhoused people themselves, activists, random members of the public and even the odd politician who can outline viable solutions to the problem mostly involving giving people, you know, homes - affordable, decent homes and I doubt a single one of them places invasive state surveillance at the top of the list of possibilities. William here is advocating for early detection as the pivot point where AI can step in, monitoring peoples finances, benefit claims and health status to flag those who require intervention. So that's a system that touches on a lot of a persons most private data to trigger a system which, as anyone who's ever had to claim anything knows, is frequently more punitive than supportive. It really does take the privilege of a royal to not guess how that's likely to play out. Personal Independence Payment appeals, for example, have a notoriously high rate of reversed decisions https://www.ukbenefits.co.uk/pip-tribunal-success-rate/ for those who manage to endure the endless process of appealing outcomes. This isn't proof of a functional system loaded with safeguards for those in need, it's proof of a punitive one which, in the first instance, assumes 'no' as a response and makes every claim a battle for support. Hardly a reassurance of the potentials of that system to use constant, AI generated reporting as a means to genuinely step in and help as opposed to perpetually seeking reasons to withdraw support. The irony of a royal pushing this sort of technosolutionist nonsense is an especially bitter pill to swallow. The accumulated wealth of our monarchy - Will's Duchy of Cornwall holdings are worth about $1.3 billion https://time.com/7003256/prince-william-earnings-salary-net-worth-royal-report/ - hints at far more obvious solutions to homelessness, albeit ones that may require an uncomfortable level of loss for our ruling classes. And that leads to the second question to ask in the face of the miracle cures of AI - ' who benefits from the technofix? ' Here, I suspect, the biggest beneficiaries are those with the most property and land, with whatever tech company that's been geeing up our King-to-be with the usual hype in search of contracts, in a distant second place. In other areas it's a question we can apply just as easily though. In education, which in the UK has been massively underfunded and denigrated for decades now, the solution of EdTech is routinely used as cover for continued austerity and cutbacks - every AI tutor an excuse to cut staffing numbers and support ever further. In policing AI it's the same, a way to avoid any real reform or investment in dealing with social issues through the retroactive detection or worse, early prediction of crime without any real engagement with the causes. In the workplace, well - even the least cynical amongst us can figure out why companies view AI as a positive and much as they may try to obscure their motivations behind buzzwords we know it's not for the good of the workers, customers or public at large. Ultimately this pattern will only ever grow clearer. Cynicism about AI solutions is already high and growing all the time as the loudest advocates of it reaffirm their status as the richest, most privileged and most opportunist. You don't need to understand the technology to see the correlation between those who exploit us and the most eager mobilisations of AI platforms, old instincts about injustice will do the job perfectly well. But cynicism accepted as predictable is a lot less useful than cynicism reacted to with anger. When the solution ignores the real change we need, when those offering it are the main beneficiaries of it we need to retain an anger about the hype and nonsense. We need a third question in the order, one that demands the positive rather than acknowledging the negative - why can't we really solve this problem? - Dylan