What “Real Risk” Means For AI-Assisted Refugee Status Determination

In the past decade, several countries have begun experimenting with artificial intelligence (AI) as part of asylum procedures. These developments can be seen as part of a wider push towards “technosolutionism” in public administration, built on the belief that automation and AI can promote both fairness and efficiency in case handling and human decision-making, which has rightly been criticized by scholars for its human rights implications. In this blog post, we take a step back and address a more foundational question: given what we know about how current generation AI models operate, how could automation in RSD give rise to new, foundational uncertainties? We take this as primarily an epistemological question and approach it by tackling the role of AI technologies in heightening human bias and epistemic problems in RSD. We then turn to ask what – if anything – can be salvaged from AI going forward?