In “The Right to Human Empathy in an Automated State ,” published at Bloomberg Law , Cary Coglianese , Edward B. Shils Professor of Law and Professor of Political Science, argues that, as more government functions become automated, the challenge will increase to ensure that government offers human empathy. He says that people deserve an opportunity to be listened to in a human-to-human interaction when confronting life-altering decisions.
An expert in administrative law, Coglianese notes that every day government offices undertake a vast range of administrative tasks: granting licenses, issuing payments, adjudicating claims, and enforcing rules. Historically, this work has been executed by government workers. But in an increasingly digital world, more government work is likely to be automated.
Some analysts and policymakers argue that the future of an automated state poses grave dangers and necessitates enshrining a “right to a human decision” — thereby prohibiting governmental reliance on digital algorithms. But Coglianese argues that human decisions are not always the best decisions and algorithms might be able to do better, in many important respects.
Even when early algorithmic tools have been shown to exhibit unjust biases (usually because bias is baked into the human-created data on which they rely), these algorithms can be mathematically adjusted to reduce undesired, unjust outcomes — a much more achievable task than eliminating humans’ implicit biases. Furthermore, because algorithms do exactly what they are told, an automated state could even be seen as the culmination of the ideals of fair, apolitical public administration that emerged in the Progressive Era at the end of the 19th century.
A right to a human decision could deny the public of the advantages that algorithms can offer. Members of the public are also likely to come to expect a digital automated state as they grow increasingly accustomed to conducting their private transactions online and having their complaints with online retailers resolved automatically through interactions with chatbots.
Yet, even with a responsible, uncorrupted, unbiased automated state, a key ingredient of good governance would turn out to be missing: the human touch. A future of a digital government seems, at first blush, quite sterile and devoid of empathy. Coglianese sees it as important, then, to consider establishing a right to human empathy, even if not a right to a human decision. By freeing up government workers from a lot of drudgery, algorithms could enable government work to shift, creating a new class of “empathy workers.”
Read more at Bloomberg Law .
Further background can be found in Coglianese’s article, “Administrative Law in the Automated State ,” which appeared last year in Dædalus, the Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
