Whatever method the border force used to determine this, I cannot imagine how AI is going to be more accurate.
Since this is the UK, see also the entire post office scandal. It was often blamed on a faulty accounting software developed by Fujitsu, even though the software put no one in jail. Human prosecutors did. But of course the British state apparatus will not admit to that, so all we hear is this story about software errors that conveniently ignores any human involvement in the process.
Likewise politicians supervising those executives somehow conveniently didn't ask any questions, forgot what they'd been told and generally had no idea what was happening.
Some of the crimes so often committed by executives who walk free needs to delete Mens Rea so that when executives say they had no idea the prosecutor doesn't even skip a beat because it doesn't matter. For comparison in UK criminal law if you have sex with a ten year old, and you try to argue† you thought they were of age and also you had their consent, the prosecutors will move on because you haven't actually defended yourself at all, sex with the ten year old was rape by definition, the fact is the crime, what you believed about it was irrelevant, you're done.
† If you have defence counsel they'll strongly urge you not to try this because it can't work
That is a massive time sink for social workers, and the appeal of having an automated system is pretty obvious. Considering that it is already all largely guesswork, I'm not really sure that "more accurate" is even an acceptance criteria for them right now- they'd probably be very happy with "mostly the same accuracy".
Of course, the social workers are opposing being taken out of the loop, but I can't imagine that there isn't already plenty of work for them elsewhere in the UK.
in my observation: when humans are automated out of a process due to the human element being inconvenient, the perceived efficiency gains are often because wronged individuals have less recourse in the automated system.
> In another example, a Vietnamese national was initially given the benefit of the doubt at the first triage that took place in the waiting area. The CIO and social worker commented on his “soft face”, which they said was consistent with his claimed age of 17. However, his “developed shoulders” and “huge hands” cast doubt for them, as did a “tiny bit of stubble” that they noticed when they asked him to raise his chin. The CIO and social worker told inspectors afterwards that Vietnamese young people were typically difficult to assess because they “did not have the same ageing process”, and “did not show signs of ageing”. When asked where the evidence for this was, they said that it was knowledge gained through their own experience. The social worker said, “It is just genetics”, but was unable to support this with evidence.
If I had to choose between being judged by an AI model and being judged based on ad hoc stereotypes of what my race's shoulders and hands typically look like, I'd definitely pick the AI.
I cannot imagine how AI is going to be more INaccurate.