The technology that allowed passengers to ride elevators without an operator was tested and ready for deployment in the 1890s. But it was only after the elevator operators’ strike of 1946—which cost New York City $100 million—that automated elevators started to get installed. It took more than 50 years to persuade people that they were as safe and as convenient as those operated by humans. The promise of radical changes from new technologies has often overshadowed the human factor that, in the end, determines if and when these technologies will be used.

Interest in artificial intelligence (AI) as an instrument for improving efficiency in the public sector is at an all-time high. This interest is motivated by the ambition to develop neutral, scientific, and objective techniques of government decisionmaking (Harcourt 2018). As of April 2021, governments of 19 European countries had launched national AI strategies. The role of AI in achieving the Sustainable Development Goals recently drew the attention of the international development community

Advocates argue that AI could radically improve the efficiency and quality of public service delivery in education, health care, social protection, and other sectors (Bullock 2019; Samoili and others 2020; de Sousa 2019; World Bank 2020). In social protection, AI could be used to assess eligibility and needs, make enrollment decisions, provide benefits, and monitor and manage benefit delivery (ADB 2020). Given these benefits and the fact that AI technology is readily available and relatively inexpensive, why has AI not been widely used in social protection?

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