AI and Digital Poverty: Bridging or Widening the Divide?

IntroductionEver since I read Terance Eden’s blog post “The unreasonable effectiveness of simple HTML”, the thought of how millions of citizens access government services in the UK has fascinated me. It really is one of those ultimately unknowable questions, no matter how much data you have, you will never fully understand why a user accesses the internet in the way they do.Only when you actually get to speak to users can you fill in the additional context about their life and unique situation, and this is where Terance’s blog post really stands out. As it’s an actual account from a young woman at a housing benefits office in London. I won’t retell the story as it is so well written, I wouldn’t be able to do it justice, but a summarised version is:The post describes a young woman sitting in a housing benefits office, surrounded by bags containing all her worldly possessions and seemingly in a difficult emotional situation. With a PlayStation Portable in her hands, she appeared at…