Applications to public services have multiplied alongside AI tools

Researcher Chris Schmitz has documented sharp growth in application volumes in 84 separate cases across 11 jurisdictions, in a paper to be presented next month at the AI Ethics and Society conference. In the United Kingdom, complaints to the housing ombudsman rose from 2,600 in 2022 to just over 7,000 last year. Complaints to the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau grew fivefold over the same period. Judicial petitions in Brazil and parliamentary petitions in Germany show similar jumps. For methodological reasons the paper stops short of claiming direct causation, but in most cases submissions were roughly flat until 2022, then accelerated, and in most of them the growth has not slowed. Schmitz says the majority of the new filings come from legitimate claimants, as a lighter application burden brings in claims people previously abandoned.