Case studies
Each week (sessions 2-5), students will present a real-life case study of the failures of an automated decision-making system.
Students will pick from the following cases:
Session 2: Fraud detection in social services
Session 3: Access to social benefits
- Tafakul (Jordan) - see Toh, A. (2023). Automated Neglect: How The World Bank’s Push to Allocate Cash Assistance Using Algorithms Threatens Rights. Human Rights Watch.
- Nutrition welfare programs (India) - see Rizwan, H. India’s Facial Recognition Drive On Hungry Children Is Erasing Them and Tapasya, Sambhav, K., Joshi, D. (2024). How an algorithm denied food to thousands of poor in India’s Telangana. Al Jazeera.
- SHA’s means testing tool (Kenya) - see Mukami, P., Kirigia, J., Geiger, G., Statius, T., Lepapa, N. (2026). Hiding Behind AI: How SHA Was Used to Load Health System Costs Onto Poorest. Africa Uncensored.
Session 4: Law enforcement, incarceration, child services
- Riscanvi (Catalonia) - see See Arandia, P., Ley, M., Sisqués, S., Martín., Ortega, M., Mateo, M., Luengo, J. (2024). Riscanvi: Un algoritmo define el futuro de los presos en Cataluña: ahora sabemo cómo funciona.
- Alerta Niñez (Chile) - see Risk Scoring Children in Chile, a recap by Paz Peña for the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (NYU Law).
- VioGén (Spain) - see Auditing the use of AI to assess risk. The case of VioGén. Eticas Foundation. Note that the government has rolled out “VioGen 2”.
Session 5: Healthcare
- A cancer-detection algorithm (Basque Country). Bernardo, Á., Álvarez del Vayo, M., Torrecillas, C., Maqueda, A., Laursen, L. (2025). Mole or cancer? The algorithm that gets one in three melanomas wrong and erases patients with dark skin. Civio.
- The Kidney Allocation Algorithm in the US, as documented and analyzed by David G. Robinson. Read Robinson’s short book Voices in the Code.