John McGag could not reach a person. This may be the usual business in this economy, but it was not a business; He had called on the Social Security Administration, as the questions are often not general and the callers tend to be older, disabled, or for the weak Americans.
McGing, on behalf of his son, had a question in herbs: How to prevent excess payments that the federal government may come back later. His invitation was intercepted by Chatbot, which works with artificial intelligence.
Regardless of what he said, the canned answers that were passed on general questions, not the mysterious inquiry of McGing. “If you do a major companion, you will not do anything,” he said. Ultimately, the robot of his “citizen or whatever” and obtained it to an agent.
It was a small incident but it was revealed. Without the knowledge of Ming, a former social security employee in Maryland, he faced a technological tool that recently provided the agency. Former officials and observers have long been told by the Trump administration that has launched a product that has been tested but has not yet been ready during the Biden administration.
“With the new administration, it is just a kind of like, let’s go quickly and fix it later, which I do not agree with, because you will generate a lot of ambiguity,” said Marcela Escobar Alafa, who held a position of senior information official in social security during the era of President Joe Biden.
About 74 million people Get social security advantages; 11 million of those who receive deficit payments. in The survey was conducted last fallMore than a third of the recipients said they would not be able to afford the costs of these necessities such as food, clothes or housing without it. However, the agency was getting rid of the employees who served them: he left about 6200 agency, delegated to it Tell the legislators in JuneCritics in Congress and other places say this led to poor customer service, despite the agency’s efforts to build new technology.
Take the new phone robot. At least some beneficiaries do not like that: social security Facebook page It is, from time to time, your bouquets with negative reviews of the universal robot, the agency said in July Almost 41 % of calls It is dealt with by the robot.
Former legislators and employees of the agency worry about vowing the least humanitarian social security, as artificial intelligence resolved to experienced employees.
Anxiety across party lines
Anxiety about the agency’s direction is the two parties. In May, a group of Republicans in the House of Representatives He wrote to the Social Security Administration Expressing the support of government competence, but a warning that their voters criticized the agency for “insufficient customer service” and suggested that some measures may be “very stressful.”
Agency Commissioner, Frank Pesiniano, former CEO of Wall Street, is technology lovers. He has a laundry menu from the $ 600 million initiatives of new technology funds in requesting the Trump administration budget 2026. It was tested when asked whether his plans mean that he would replace human employees on behalf.
“I have indicated that SSA is a decrease in the number of employees at all; it’s also at an ever technological level,” he picked up in a Democrat at a hearing in the House of Representatives in late June.
But former social security officials are more contradictory. In interviews with KFF Health News, the people who left the agency – some of them talking about the lack of disclosure of his identity for fear of revenge on the Trump administration and its supporters – they believe that the new administration has simply rushed to advanced technologies, but it was not yet ready, by the Biden administration. They also said that the agency’s launch of thousands of employees resulted in the loss of experienced technicians who are better equipped to launch these initiatives and address their weaknesses.
“The new AI’s AI’s social security phone tool makes it difficult for people to get help via phone-almost impossible if someone needs an American translator or translator.” “We must make it easy as possible for people to get the social security they got.”
The agency’s spokesperson did not answer questions from the KFF Health News.
AI’s use of customer service automation is one of the most tiny companies in Silicon Valley. In theory, the new dynasty of artificial intelligence techniques can respond smoothly, in a human -like voice, to any question. This is not the way the social security management robot appears to be working, as users report unrelated canned responses.
Kathleen Romij, a former agency official, is now the director of social security and deficit policy at the Budget and Politics Center, that the Trump administration has canceled some online statistics that block its real performance. The old site showed that most callers waited for two hours for an answer. Now, the site does not show waiting times, either for phone inquiries (as soon as the waiting time for the call is calculated) or schedule.
While the statistics that receive the beneficiaries receive assistance – that is, the use of artificial intelligence bots or the agency’s website to accomplish tasks such as obtaining an alternative card – Rumij said she believed it is a “very distorted view” in general. She said artificial intelligence robot reviews are often bad.
The agency leaders and employees who first worked on the artificial intelligence product during the Biden administration expected these types of difficulties. Escobar-Aalava said they worked on such a robot, but they wanted to clean the policy and organization data that she was depending on first.
“We wanted to make sure that the automation that produces consistent and accurate answers, which would have taken more time,” she said. Instead, the Trump administration appears to have chosen the robot first and explore and fix errors at a later time.
Romij said that one of the former executives told her that the agency had used the most canned questions without adjustments or accurate differences to accommodate individual positions and was watching technology to find out the quality of its performance. Escobar Alafa said she heard the same.
Can automation help?
To bisignano, automation and web services are the most effective way to help beneficiaries in the program. in Message to WarrenHe said that agency leaders “convert SSA to a digital agency asking customers where they want to fulfill them”, where they make changes that allow dealing with the vast majority of calls either automatically or by a human return to the customer’s call.
With these methods, it also reduces the burdens on the besieged field offices otherwise, Bisignano Books.
Changing the phone’s experience is not the end of technology dreams in Bisignano. The agency requested Congress About 600 million dollars In additional financing for investments, which he intends to use for online schedule, detection of fraud, and much more, according to a list presented to the house in late June.
But external experts and former employees said that Bisignano is exaggerated in the modernity of the ideas he presented to Congress. Romij said that the agency is updating its technology for years, but this does not necessarily mean that thousands of its workers are suddenly outdated. She said it is not bad for promotions to continue, but progress was gradual than the revolutionary.
Some changes focus on stimulating the agency’s general face. Bisignano legislators in the House of Representatives have told that he supervised the redesign of the agency’s performance statistics page to confirm the number of automated calls and demonstrations about waiting times for calls. He described the recent statistics as “discharge” and suggested that their display online may discourage the beneficiaries of communication.
Warren said Bisignano has since told her that he would allow a “general review of the inspector” of their customer service quality data and pledged to provide a list of performance information in general. The agency has since updated its performance statistics page.
Other changes will come at a greater cost and effort. In April, the agency presented a security authentication program for direct deposit changes, which requires beneficiaries to verify their identity personally if the agency described in organizational documents as an “automatic” analysis system discovers abnormal cases.
according to The accompanying documents The proposal, the agency estimated that about 5.8 million beneficiaries would be affected – and that it will cost the federal government about $ 1.2 billion, most of which are paid at the time of employees devoted to helping the demands. The agency requests approximately $ 7.7 billion in the coming fiscal year for salary statements in general.
Christopher Hinsley, financial advisor at Houston, said that one of his clients called him in May after her bank changed the guidance number and social security stopped paying her, forcing her to borrow money from her family.
It turns out that the agency had a mark on its fraud account. Hinsley said she had to travel for 30 minutes to the nearest social security office to verify her identity and correct the problem.
KFF Health News is a national news room that produces an in-depth press on health issues and is one of the basic operating programs in KFF-independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
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