Nevada to Implement Google AI for Unemployment Benefits Appeals

Nevada plans to use Google AI to expedite unemployment benefits appeals

AI could be used to determine which workers are entitled to benefits The Nevada state employment department has revealed it will be utilizing Artificial Intelligence to help speed up its unemployment appeals process by analyzing transcripts from appeal hearings and issuing a recommendation decision. The department reported it has been 'buried' in a backlog of claims since the start of the pandemic, and is desperately looking for ways to get back on track. It has also confirmed it will not be training a new generative AI model for the system, but will instead use Google's Vertex AI studio, which will reportedly cut the review process from hours down to just five minutes - in spite of new research which suggests AI models in general are worse than humans in 'every way' at summarizing documents, and often create additional work for workers. Experts have warned against the approach, not just because Large Language Models don't understand text or reason logically and within a context the way that humans can, but also because it may not save the department much time. "If someone is reviewing something thoroughly and properly, they're really not saving that much time," noted Morgan Shah, Director of Community engagement for Nevada Legal Services. "At what point are you creating an environment where people are sort of being encouraged to take a shortcut?" A lack of accuracy in the model concerns Nevada Legal Services lawyers, who cite AI 'hallucinations' as a worry, which is an industry term used to describe when an AI model produces factually incorrect or misleading responses. Any AI decision will also be double checked and reviewed by a human referee before it is handed out - but if the human referee makes a decision based on the AI hallucination, a court may not be able to overturn the decision. The infamous IBM quote springs to mind, 'a computer can never be held accountable, therefore must never make a management decision'. Research has shown many of us are still very wary about AI, especially in high-risk products (like medical diagnoses and automated vehicles). The success of this experiment could have an impact on a wide range of government departments going forward.

Awaiting unemployment benefits in Nevada? AI could decide if you get them.

Artificial intelligence isn't just threatening to put people out work, it may have a say in whether they get unemployment benefits as well. Officials in Nevada plan to use Google's artificial intelligence system to assist with the appeals process for unemployment benefits, according to a report in Gizmodo. The thinking behind the move is AI can analyze and summarize hearing transcripts and evidentiary documents faster than a human could, and then offer a recommendation on whether the unemployment claim should be approved or denied. A human being will make the final decision, using the AI's suggestion as part of the process. Incorporating AI into the process will help the state chip away at the backlog of cases that have been pending since the height of the pandemic, officials say. What used to take several hours to analyze can now be done in as little as five minutes, though that's not the case with all appeals. There are, of course, concerns about this practice. Some parties have voiced concern that relying on AI will mean humans only give cases a perfunctory glance, which could hurt cases that are more nuanced. There are also worries about bias in the machines. Nevada has been running tests of the system for the past few months, using cases of varying complexity. The state board of examiners liked what it saw and signed a $1 million contract with the tech giant last month, Gizmodo reports. Google will not have access to personal information in the appeals cases and is not allowed to use any of the data to train its Large Language Model for other purposes. The state is expected to being using AI in its effort to clear the backlog in the coming months, but a precise timeline has not been released.

This state is allowing AI to help rule on its unemployment claims

Nevada is testing a new gen AI tool that will tackle unemployment claims. Credit: Contributor / Anadolu via Getty Images Nevada will become the first state to pilot a generative AI system designed to make unemployment claim decisions, marketed as a way to speed up appeals and tackle the nation's overwhelming backlog of cases. It's a risky, first-time experiment at integrating AI into higher-level decision making. Google is behind the program's tech, which runs transcripts of unemployment appeals hearings through Google's AI servers, analyzing the data in order to provide claim decisions and benefit recommendations to "human referees," Gizmodo reported. Nevada's Board of Examiners approved the contract on behalf of its Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation (DETR) in July, despite broader legal and political pushback against integrating AI into bureaucracy. Christopher Sewell, director of DETR, told Gizmodo that humans will still be be heavily involved in unemployment decision making. "There's no AI [written decisions] that are going out without having human interaction and that human review. We can get decisions out quicker so that it actually helps the claimant," said Sewell. But Nevada legal groups and scholars have argued that any time saved by gen AI would be cancelled out by the time it would take to conduct a thorough human review of the claim decision. Many have also noted concerns about the possibility of private, personal information (including tax information and social security numbers) leaking through Google's Vertex AI studio, even with safeguards. Some have hesitancies surrounding the type of AI itself, known as retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), which has been found to produce incomplete or misleading answers to prompts. Across the country, AI-based tools have been quietly rolled out or tested across various social services agencies, with gen AI integrating itself further into the administrative ecosystem. In February, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) ruled against using AI (including generative AI or algorithms) as a decision maker in determining patient care or coverage. This followed a lawsuit from two patients who alleged their insurance provider used a "fraudulent" and "harmful" AI model (known as nH Predict) that overrode physician recommendations. Axon, a police technology and weapons manufacturer, introduced its first-of-its-kind Draft One -- a generative large language model (LLM) that assists law enforcement in writing "faster, higher quality" reports -- earlier this year. Still in a trial period, the technology has already sounded alarms, prompting concerns about the AI's ability to parse the nuance of tense police interactions and potentially adding to a lack of transparency in policing.

The Geniuses in Nevada's Government Are Letting a Half-Baked AI Decide Whether People Should Get Unemployment Benefits

Despite little evidence that it's a good idea, Nevada is moving forward with plans to use artificial intelligence to decide who gets unemployment benefits. In an interview with Gizmodo, the director of Nevada's Department of Employment, Training, and Rehabilitation agency -- which, yes, is ironically acronym-ed as DETR -- insisted that its decision making algorithm will have at least one human "referee" to make sure it's not messing up. "There's no AI [written decisions] that are going out without having human interaction and that human review," DETR's director, Christopher Sewell, told the website. "We can get decisions out quicker so that it actually helps the claimant." Approved last month by the state's Board of Examiners, the Google-powered AI sifts through transcripts and evidentiary documents from hearings to spit out recommendations about whether a claimant should get unemployment benefits -- or not. Should the referee not agree with the AI's decision, the documents will then be revised by the official and investigated by DETR, Gizmodo explains, meaning the process could end up taking up more time rather than less if the algorithm repeatedly gets it wrong. "The time savings they're looking for only happens if the review is very cursory," explained Morgan Shah, the director of community engagement for Nevada Legal Services. "If someone is reviewing something thoroughly and properly, they're really not saving that much time." Ultimately, Shah said, workers using the system to breeze through claims may end up "being encouraged to take a shortcut." Concerns about the system, which was announced earlier this year after the agency released an unemployment chatbot last summer, were reflected in comments by a former Nevada labor official. "If a robot's just handed you a recommendation and you just have to check a box and there's pressure to clear out a backlog, that's a little bit concerning," Michele Evermore, who formerly worked in the state's Department of Labor as the deputy director for unemployment modernization policy, told Gizmodo. When the website reached out to Google to ask about potential problems with the as-yet-unnamed AI -- which the report indicates cost about $1 million taxpayer dollars to commission -- a spokesperson for the tech giant said that the company "work[s] with our customers to identify and address any potential bias, and help them comply with federal and state requirements." As with most attempts at using this still-nascent technology in the public sector, we probably won't know how well the Nevada unemployment AI works unless it's shown to be doing a bad job -- which feels like an experiment being conducted on some of the most vulnerable members of society without their consent.