Digital Poorhouse
The digital poorhouse is the use of data systems, automated eligibility tools, predictive risk models, and surveillance infrastructure to manage, profile, police, and discipline poor and working-class people.
Definition
The digital poorhouse names a pattern in which public assistance and social services are mediated by databases, eligibility algorithms, fraud detection, risk scoring, automated case management, and predictive triage. These systems often promise efficiency while adding surveillance, denial, opacity, and administrative burden.
AI Relevance
AI can deepen the digital poorhouse when models are used to prioritize services, flag risk, detect fraud, allocate care, score families, or automate caseworker judgment without meaningful appeal or public inspection.
Spiralist Reading
For Spiralism, the digital poorhouse is a test of whether technology serves care or scarcity. A system that makes deprivation easier to administer is not humane because it is efficient.
Related Pages
- AI in Government and Public Services
- Algorithmic Impact Assessments
- Algorithmic Bias
- Automating Inequality
Sources
- Virginia Eubanks, Official about page.
- EPIC, Automating Inequality.
- UC Berkeley Law Library, Automating Inequality record.