BiasHigh
UK Government AI Allegedly Targets Disproportionate Numbers of Certain Nationals for Fraud Review
- Occurred
- Dec 6, 2021
- Published
- Oct 24, 2023
- Source
- AI Incident Database
Summary
The UK's Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) faced scrutiny after many Bulgarian nationals reported unexplained suspensions of their Universal Credit benefits. The MP for Edmonton raised concerns about potential nationality-based targeting for benefit fraud investigations, leading to poverty and homelessness among affected individuals. The Home Office's own equality impact assessment found it was flagging a disproportionate number of marriages from Greece, Albania, Bulgaria and Romania.
Developers
- Home Office
- Department for Work and Pensions
- British government
Deployers
- Various British government offices
- Home Office
- Department for Work and Pensions
- British government
Harmed parties
- Romanians in the United Kingdom
- Greeks in the United Kingdom
- Bulgarians in the United Kingdom
- British public
- Albanians in the United Kingdom
Classification
Category confidence: 90%
Severity confidence: 85%
Rationale: AI system allegedly targets specific nationalities for fraud review, causing poverty and homelessness.
Classifier: Qwen/Qwen3.5-35B-A3B-FP8