Heterogeneous preferences and asymmetric insights for AI use among welfare claimants and non-claimants

Mengchen Dong, Jean-François Bonnefon and Iyad Rahwan ()
Additional contact information
Mengchen Dong: Max Planck Society
Jean-François Bonnefon: TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, TSM - Toulouse School of Management Research - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - TSM - Toulouse School of Management - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse, CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Iyad Rahwan: Max Planck Society

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: The deployment of AI in welfare benefit allocation accelerates decision-making but has led to unfair denials and false fraud accusations. In the US and UK (N = 3249), we examine public acceptability of speed-accuracy trade-offs among claimants and non-claimants. While the public generally tolerates modest accuracy losses for faster decisions, claimants are less willing to accept AI in welfare systems, raising concerns that using aggregate data for calibration could misalign policies with the preferences of those most affected. Our study further uncovers asymmetric insights between claimants and non-claimants. Non-claimants overestimate claimants' willingness to accept speed-accuracy trade-offs, even when financially incentivized for accurate perspective-taking. This suggests that policy decisions aimed at supporting vulnerable groups may need to incorporate minority voices beyond popular opinion, as non-claimants may not easily understand claimants' perspectives.

Date: 2025-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Nature Communications, 2025, 16 (1), pp.6973. ⟨10.1038/s41467-025-62440-3⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05277674

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-025-62440-3

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().