‘Digital welfare state’: big tech allowed to target and surveil the poor, UN is warned

UN's rapporteur on extreme poverty says in devastating account big tech companies are being allowed to go unregulated in 'human right free-zones' and not held accountable

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Nations around the world are "stumbling zombie-like into a digital welfare dystopia" in which artificial intelligence and other technologies are used to target, surveil and punish the poorest people, the United Nations' monitor on poverty has warned.

Philip Alston, UN rapporteur on extreme poverty, has produced a devastating account of how new digital technologies are revolutionizing the interaction between governments and the most vulnerable in society. In what he calls the rise of the "digital welfare state", billions of dollars of public money is now being invested in automated systems that are radically changing the nature of social protection.