Governing the Automated Welfare State: Translations between AI Ethics and Anti-discrimination Regulation

There is an increasing demand to utilize technological possibilities in the Nordic public sector. Automated decision-making (ADM) has been deployed in some areas towards that end. While ADM is associated with a range of benefits, research shows that its use, with elements of AI, also implicates risks of discrimination and unfair treatment, which has stimulated a flurry of normative guidelines. This article seeks to explore how a sample of these international high-level principled ideas on fairness translate into the specific governance of ADM in national public-sector authorities in Sweden. It does so by answering the question of how ideas about AI ethics and fairness are considered in relation to regulation on anti-discrimination in Swedish public-sector governance. By using a Scandinavian institutionalist approach to translation theory, we trace how ideas about AI governance and public-sector governance translate into state-authority practice; specifically, regarding the definition of ADM, how AI has impacted it as both discourse and technology, and the ideas of ‘ethicsʼ and ‘discriminationʼ. The results indicate that there is a variance in how different organizations understand and translate ideas about AI ethics and discrimination. These tensions need to be addressed in order to develop AI governance practices.