Google AI will process unemployment claims in Nevada

Following the relatively recent AI boom, LLMs are increasingly present in our daily lives. Artificial intelligence now powers many of the services you use on a daily basis, although you may not notice it at first. However, it’s not all about enjoying new features  on PCs and mobile devices. AI is capable of automating and streamlining processes that were previously cumbersome or time-consuming. In Nevada, a Google-powered AI will now handle one such process: unemployment claims analysis.

An unemployment claim is something you probably never want to do, as it means you’ve lost your job. Approved applications offer temporary payments to beneficiaries while they find a new job. However, currently, the process can be quite slow, as humans review each claim individually. This leads to reviews that can last hours as thousands of pending applications pile up.

Nevada is turning to Google AI to review unemployment claims

A similar situation was playing out in Nevada, so authorities are turning to AI to speed things up. In June, the state had about 10,000 appeals waiting for review. About 1,500 of those pending claims date back to the COVID era. You can see how inconvenient and slow the process is. To improve the situation, Nevada will use a Google AI trained in the state’s unemployment laws and policies to analyze pending claims.

According to Carl Stanfield, IT administrator at DETR, the AI can issue a verdict in about 5 minutes. For reference, humans took about three hours per claim. So, there’s a pretty significant time savings. While the AI will make a final recommendation, a human employee will still review the output to make sure everything is in order. Still, the process will be much faster than before.

While the AI-based claim review shows huge advantages, there are also some concerns. Michele Evermore, a former deputy director for unemployment modernization policy at the Department of Labor, worries that pressure to clear out pending claims could lead human employees to make hasty decisions about whether to approve AI output. A Nevada politician also expressed concern about the “whole concept of overreliance on algorithms and computers.”