John McGing could not reach a person. That may be business in this economy-but it was not business. He had called the social security administration, in which the questions are often not generic and the callers tend to be older, disabled or in any other vulnerable American.
McGing, who called on behalf of his son, had a question in the waves: How to prevent overpayments from being able to prevent the federal government from preventing the federal government Could go back later. His call was intercepted by an artificial chat bot by artificial intelligence.
No matter what he said, the bot answers to generic questions, not on McGing's dark request. “If you do a button, it didn't do anything,” he said. Finally, the bot “stormed” or whatever “and brought him to an agent.
It was a small but revealing incident. Unknown by McGing, a former social security employee in Maryland, he had come across a technological instrument recently introduced by the agency. Former officials and long -time observers of the agency say that the Trump administration triggered a product that has been tested, but is not yet ready during the bidges.
“With the new administration, they are just like that, let's go quickly and fix them later, which I do not agree to because they will create a lot of confusion,” said Marcela Escobar-Alava, who acted as Chief Information Officer of Social Security under President Joe Biden.
Around 74 million people Get social security benefits; 11 million of these receive disability payments. In A Survey carried out last autumnMore than a third of the recipients said they couldn't afford any necessities such as food, clothing or living space. And yet the agency has the employees who serve them shared the legislators in JuneAnd critics in the congress and elsewhere say that despite the agency's efforts to build up new technologies, this has led to poorer customer service.
Take the new phone bot. At least some beneficiaries do not like it: social insurance Facebook page is from time to time with negative reviews of the uncooperative bot Almost 41% of the calls are treated by the bot.
Legislators and former agency workers fear that there is less human social security in which hurried AI takes the place of the outdated, experienced employees.
Fears across non -party lines
Course for the direction of the agency is non -partisan. A group of domestic republicans in May wrote to the social security management To express support for the government's efficiency, however, warns that its voters had criticized the agency for “inadequate customer service” and point out that some measures could possibly be “excessively stressful”.
The commissioner of the agency, Frank Bisignano, a former manager of Wall Street, is a technology enthusiast. It has a laundry list of initiatives that can issue the 600 million US dollars for new Tech money in the budgetary request of the Trump administration 2026. He became Testy when he was asked whether his plans would lead him to replace the human staff with AI.
“You related to the fact that SSA is down on an all-time personnel low.
But former social security officers are ambivalent. In interviews with KFF Health News, people who left the agency left -some languages on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation by the Trump government and its supporters -that the new administration is simply developed by the bidges, but is not yet finished. They also said that the dismissal of thousands of employees led to the loss of experienced technologists through the agency who are best equipped to publish these initiatives and tackle their weaknesses.
“The new AI telephone tool of social security makes it even more difficult for people to receive help via the phone-and almost impossible if someone needs an American sign language interpreter or translator,” Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) told KFF Health News. “We should make it as easy for people as possible to maintain the social security they deserve.”
Spokesman for the agency did not answer questions from KFF Health News.
The use of AI to automate customer service is one of the creepiest companies in Silicon Valley. In theory, the new generation of artificial intelligence technologies can react smoothly to almost any question with a human voice. For example, the bot does not seem to work for the social security management, and users report consumed, non -related answers.
The Trump administration has removed some online statistics that cover their true performance, said Kathleen Romig, a former agency official, who is now a director for social security and disability guidelines at the left-wing household and political priorities. The old website showed that most callers were waiting for an answer for two hours. Now the website does not show waiting times either for telephone inquiries (as soon as the waiting time for the recall time is taken into account) or scheduling.
While statistics are published that show that the beneficiaries receive -that is, with the AI -Bot or the website of the agency to do tasks like a replacement card -said Romig that it is a “very distorted view”. The reviews of the AI -Bot are often poor, she said.
Agency leaders and employees who worked on the AI product for the first time during the bid administration awaited these types of difficulties. Escobar-Alava said they had worked on such a bot, but wanted to remove the guidelines and regulatory data that they were first dependent on.
“We wanted to ensure that automation gave consistent and precise answers, which would take more time,” she said. Instead, it seems that the Trump administration has decided to introduce the bot first and later fix errors, said Escobar-Alava.
Romig said a former manager told her that the agency FAQs in doses used without changes or nuances to record individual situations and monitor the technology to see how well it performs. Escobar-Alava said she heard similarly.
Could automation help?
Bisignano is the most efficient options for supporting the beneficiaries of the program. In A Letter to WarrenHe said that the managers of the agency “transform SSA into a digital agency that meets customers where they want to be fulfilled” and make changes that make it possible to either return the vast majority of calls by a person who returns the customer call.
The use of these methods also relieves loads on otherwise oppressed branch offices, wrote Bisignano.
The change in telephone experience is not the end of bissignanos technical dreams. The agency asked the congress Around $ 600 million In additional financial resources for investments that he wants to use for online planning, the detection of fraud and much more, a list stated that was presented to the house at the end of June.
But external experts and former employees said Bissignano overrated the novelty of the ideas that he had introduced to the congress. The agency has updated its technology for years, but that does not necessarily mean that thousands of its employees are suddenly outdated, said Romig. It is not bad that the upgrades are continued, she said, but progress is more incrementary than revolutionary.
Some changes focus on improving the agency's public face. Bissignano informed the legislator House that he had supervised a redesign of the agency's performance statistics page in order to emphasize the number of automated calls and to rethink statistics via call-up times. He called the latter statistics “discouraging” and suggested that the online display could possibly dissuade the beneficiaries from an appeal.
Warren said that Bisignano had been privately informed her since then that he would allow a “general examination” of customers in general quality and promised to publicly create a list of performance information. Since then, the agency has updated the side of the performance statistics.
Other changes would represent greater costs and efforts. In April, the agency organized a security authentication program for direct deposit changes in which the beneficiaries have to personally verify their identity if what the agency has described in regulatory documents as “automated” analysis system recognizes anomalies.
Accordingly Documents that are accompanied The proposal that the agency estimates that around 5.8 million beneficiaries would be affected – and that the federal government would cost almost 1.2 billion US dollars, which are mainly dedicated to the support of the applicants. In the coming financial year, the agency is asking for a total of almost 7.7 billion US dollars for the salary statement.
Christopher Hensley, a financial advisor in Houston, said that one of his customers called him in May after her bank changed her routing number and social security no longer paid her and forced her to borrow money from her family.
It turned out that the agency had reported its account for fraud. Hensley said she had to travel to the next social security office for 30 minutes to check her identity and to fix the problem.
Tahir writes for Kff Health News is a national news editor Kff – The independent source of health policy research, surveys and journalism.