Welfare system AI pilots dropped over 'false starts'

Ministers have shut down or dropped at least half a dozen artificial intelligence prototypes intended for the welfare system, the Guardian has learned, in a sign of the headwinds facing Keir Starmer's attempt to increase government efficiency.

- Robert Booth

Pilots of AIs to enhance staff training, improve the service in job centres, speed up disability benefit payments and modernise communication systems are not being taken forward, freedom of information (FoI) requests reveal.

Officials have admitted internally that ensuring AI systems are "scalable, reliable and thoroughly tested" are challenges and there have been many "frustrations and false starts".

Not all trials would be expected to make it into regular use, but two of those now scrapped had been highlighted by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) in its latest annual report as examples of how it had "successfully tested multiple generative AI proofs of concept".

A-cubed was intended to help staff steer jobseekers into work. Aigent was supposed to accelerate personal independence payments relied on by millions of people with disabilities.

This month the prime minister declared: "AI is the way to transform our public services" and wrote to all cabinet ministers "tasking them with driving AI adoption and growth and making that a top priority for their departments".