> by Deloitte and other contractors for more than $400 million—is supposed to analyze income and health information to automatically determine eligibility for benefits program applicants.
Ultimately this needs to be weighed against 1. How accurately, corruption free, and expediently would $400M of humans performed compared to the software, and 2. How much better software could have been delivered by Code for America had they been given the $400M in resources.
My gut suspicions are 1. Much worse, and 2. Much better
It should only be weighed against the harms it's caused right now and any company responsible for those harms should face meaningful consequences as a result. It doesn't matter if humans would have done worse in the same situation (something you can't easily prove anyway) the same way we don't weigh the actions of a murderer based on how much more horrifically some other murderer might have killed the victims. We just punish the murderer we have for what they've actually done.
Maybe generally software is a good idea, but this software was a total nightmare and it clearly has no place making these decisions.
Ultimately this needs to be weighed against 1. How accurately, corruption free, and expediently would $400M of humans performed compared to the software, and 2. How much better software could have been delivered by Code for America had they been given the $400M in resources.
My gut suspicions are 1. Much worse, and 2. Much better