Inescapable AI

Employing a broad definition of AI, this report represents the first known effort to comprehensively explain and quantify the reach of AI-based decision-making among low-income people in the United States.

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Los Angeles, CA

The use of artificial intelligence, or AI, by governments, landlords, employers, and other powerful private interests restricts the opportunities of low-income people in every basic aspect of life: at home, at work, in school, at government offices, and within families. AI technologies derive from a lineage of automation and algorithms that have been in use for decades with established patterns of harm to low-income communities. As such, now is a critical moment to take stock and correct course before AI of any level of technical sophistication becomes entrenched as a legitimate way to make key decisions about the people society marginalizes. Employing a broad definition of AI, this report represents the first known effort to comprehensively explain and quantify the reach of AI-based decision-making among low-income people in the United States. It establishes that essentially all 92 million low-income people in the U.S. states—everyone whose income is less than 200 percent of the federal poverty line—have some basic aspect of their lives decided by AI.