John McGing couldn鈥檛 reach a human. That might be business-as-usual in this economy, but it wasn鈥檛 business; he had called the Social Security Administration, where the questions often aren鈥檛 generic and the callers tend to be older, disabled, or otherwise vulnerable Americans.
McGing, calling on behalf of his son, had an in-the-weeds question: how to prevent overpayments that the federal government might later claw back. His call was intercepted by an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot.
No matter what he said, the bot parroted canned answers to generic questions, not McGing鈥檚 obscure query. 鈥淚f you do a key press, it didn’t do anything,鈥 he said. Eventually, the bot 鈥済litched or whatever鈥 and got him to an agent.
It was a small but revealing incident. Unbeknownst to McGing, a former Social Security employee in Maryland, he had encountered a technological tool recently introduced by the agency. Former officials and longtime observers of the agency say the Trump administration rolled out a product that was tested but deemed not yet ready during the Biden administration.
鈥淲ith the new administration, they’re just kind of like, let’s go fast and fix it later, which I don’t agree with, because you are going to generate a lot of confusion,鈥 said Marcela Escobar-Alava, who served as Social Security鈥檚 chief information officer under President Joe Biden.
Some 74 million people ; 11 million of those receive disability payments. In a , more than a third of recipients said they wouldn鈥檛 be able to afford such necessities as food, clothing, or housing without it. And yet the agency has been shedding the employees who serve them: Some 6,200 have left the agency, its commissioner , and critics in Congress and elsewhere say that鈥檚 led to worse customer service, despite the agency鈥檚 efforts to build up new technology.
Take the new phone bot. At least some beneficiaries don鈥檛 like it: Social Security鈥檚 is, from time to time, pockmarked with negative reviews of the uncooperative bot, as the agency said in July that are handled by the bot.
Lawmakers and former agency employees worry it foreshadows a less human Social Security, in which rushed-out AI takes the place of pushed-out, experienced employees.
Anxieties Across Party Lines
Concern over the direction of the agency is bipartisan. In May, a group of House Republicans expressing support for government efficiency, but cautioning that their constituents had criticized the agency for 鈥渋nadequate customer service鈥 and suggesting that some measures may be 鈥渙verly burdensome.鈥
The agency鈥檚 commissioner, Frank Bisignano, a former Wall Street executive, is a tech enthusiast. He has a laundry list of initiatives on which to spend the $600 million in new tech money in the Trump administration鈥檚 fiscal 2026 budget request. He鈥檚 gotten testy when asked whether his plans mean he鈥檒l be replacing human staff with AI.
鈥淵ou referred to SSA being on an all-time staffing low; it鈥檚 also at an all-time technological high,鈥 he snapped at one Democrat in a House hearing in late June.
But former Social Security officials are more ambivalent. In interviews with 麻豆女优 Health News, people who left the agency 鈥 some speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution from the Trump administration and its supporters 鈥 said they believe the new administration simply rushed out technologies developed, but deemed not yet ready, by the Biden administration. They also said the agency鈥檚 firing of thousands of employees resulted in the loss of experienced technologists who are best equipped to roll out these initiatives and address their weaknesses.
鈥淪ocial Security鈥檚 new AI phone tool is making it even harder for people to get help over the phone 鈥 and near impossible if someone needs an American Sign Language interpreter or translator,鈥 Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told 麻豆女优 Health News. 鈥淲e should be making it as easy as possible for people to get the Social Security they鈥檝e earned.鈥
Spokespeople for the agency did not reply to questions from 麻豆女优 Health News.
Using AI to automate customer service is one of the buzziest businesses in Silicon Valley. In theory, the new breed of artificial intelligence technologies can smoothly respond, in a human-like voice, to just about any question. That鈥檚 not how the Social Security Administration鈥檚 bot seems to work, with users reporting canned, unrelated responses.
The Trump administration has eliminated some online statistics that obscure its true performance, said Kathleen Romig, a former agency official who is now director of Social Security and disability policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The old website showed that most callers waited two hours for an answer. Now, the website doesn鈥檛 show waiting times, either for phone inquiries (once callback wait time is accounted for) or appointment scheduling.
While statistics are being posted that show beneficiaries receive help 鈥 that is, using the AI bot or the agency鈥檚 website to accomplish tasks like getting a replacement card 鈥 Romig said she thinks it鈥檚 a 鈥渧ery distorted view鈥 overall. Reviews of the AI bot are often poor, she said.
Agency leaders and employees who first worked on the AI product during the Biden administration anticipated those types of difficulties. Escobar-Alava said they had worked on such a bot, but wanted to clean up the policy and regulation data it was relying on first.
鈥淲e wanted to ensure the automation produced consistent and accurate answers, which was going to take more time,鈥 she said. Instead, it seems the Trump administration opted to introduce the bot first and troubleshoot later, Escobar-Alava said.
Romig said one former executive told her that the agency had used canned FAQs without modifications or nuances to accommodate individual situations and was monitoring the technology to see how well it performed. Escobar-Alava said she has heard similarly.
Could Automation Help?
To Bisignano, automation and web services are the most efficient ways to assist the program鈥檚 beneficiaries. In a , he said that agency leaders 鈥渁re transforming SSA into a digital-first agency that meets customers where they want to be met,鈥 making changes that allow the vast majority of calls to be handled either in an automated fashion or by having a human return the customer鈥檚 call.
Using these methods also relieves burdens on otherwise beleaguered field offices, Bisignano wrote.
Altering the phone experience is not the end of Bisignano鈥檚 tech dreams. The agency asked Congress for in additional funding for investments, which he intends to use for online scheduling, detecting fraud, and much more, according to a list submitted to the House in late June.
But outside experts and former employees said Bisignano overstated the novelty of the ideas he presented to Congress. The agency has been updating its technology for years, but that does not necessarily mean thousands of its workers are suddenly obsolete, Romig said. It鈥檚 not bad that the upgrades are continuing, she said, but progress has been more incremental than revolutionary.
Some changes focus on spiffing up the agency鈥檚 public face. Bisignano told House lawmakers that he oversaw a redesign of the agency鈥檚 performance-statistics page to emphasize the number of automated calls and deemphasize statistics about call wait times. He called the latter stats 鈥渄iscouraging鈥 and suggested that displaying them online might dissuade beneficiaries from calling.
Warren said Bisignano has since told her privately that he would allow an 鈥渋nspector general audit鈥 of their customer-service quality data and pledged to make a list of performance information publicly available. The agency has since updated its performance statistics page.
Other changes would come at greater cost and effort. In April, the agency rolled out a security authentication program for direct deposit changes, requiring beneficiaries to verify their identity in person if what the agency described in regulatory documents as an 鈥渁utomated鈥 analysis system detects anomalies.
According to the proposal, the agency estimated about 5.8 million beneficiaries would be affected 鈥 and that it would cost the federal government nearly $1.2 billion, mostly driven by staff time devoted to assisting claimants. The agency is asking for nearly $7.7 billion in the upcoming fiscal year for payroll overall.
Christopher Hensley, a financial adviser in Houston, said one of his clients called him in May after her bank changed its routing number and Social Security stopped paying her, forcing her to borrow money from her family.
It turned out that the agency had flagged her account for fraud. Hensley said she had to travel 30 minutes to the nearest Social Security office to verify her identity and correct the problem.
