How The UK Government Uses Artificial Intelligence To Identify Welfare And State Benefits Fraud

AI Identifies Large-Scale Abuse of the Benefits System

Benefit fraud at the hands of criminal gangs cost the Department of Work and Pensions nearly £2.1 billion in 2016, a rise of £200 million in just one year. The losses to fraud equate to the entire budget of the Foreign Office, which is £1.1 billion annually. To combat this crime, ministers have launched Artificial Intelligence (AI) to detect fraudulent claims. The algorithms look for patterns in claims such as the same phone number or applications written in the same style. Once a claim is flagged as suspicious, a human investigator takes over to determine if the claim is in fact fraudulent.