Virginia Eubanks
Political scientist; author of Automating Inequality
Virginia Eubanks reports on how automated eligibility, risk-scoring and predictive systems are used on poor and working-class people first. Automating Inequality (2018) traces what she calls the digital poorhouse through welfare, homelessness services and child-welfare screening.
Key arguments & positions
- Argues automated decision systems are tested on poor and working-class people first, then scaled upward once the harms are normalized.
- Describes the resulting apparatus as a "digital poorhouse": eligibility screening, risk scoring and surveillance replacing discretion and appeal.
- Holds that the right question about any such system is not accuracy but what happens to the person who is wrongly flagged.
Accomplishments
- Associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, SUNY.
- Author of Automating Inequality (2018), reporting on welfare, homelessness services and child-welfare screening systems.
- Co-founder of the Our Data Bodies Project.
Papers & key writings
Links
In the library
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