Episode Details

Impact Signals #107: South Africa's Welfare Algorithm Goes on Trial, New Mexico Districts Exit an AI Reading Mandate, Pakistan's First Provincial Disaster Policy Seven days before South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal decides whether an algorithm can keep determining who receives the country's R370 monthly hunger grant, a Wits University analysis details how digitization shrank the rolls from 16 million recipients to 5.6 million. In New Mexico, five districts and a charter school have pulled out of the state's mandatory AI reading assessment over children's voice recordings, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has become the first Pakistani province with a cabinet-approved disaster risk reduction policy. Today's signal is accountability: courts, parents, and provincial cabinets are putting on the record what automated systems are allowed to do to the people who depend on them. --- Top Stories **1. Sixteen Million Recipients Became 5.6 Million After Automation: South Africa's Top Appeals Court Hears the Algorithm Case on August 25** On August 25, South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal hears the government's appeal in Institute for Economic Justice v. SASSA, the case that will decide whether the country's fully automated Social Relief of Distress grant survives. The SRD grant, launched in May 2020, pays R370 a month (about $23) to people with no other income; applications are digital-only, and eligibility is decided by algorithmic checks against bank records and government databases. The…