Artificial Intelligence Can Help States Manage the Unemployment Crisis

From March 1 to April 4, 2020, the Illinois Department of Employment Security received 513,173 unemployment claims -- more than the entire number of claims filed in 2019. It was impossible for IDES employees to handle this volume, resulting in many disconnected phone calls and unanswered online queries. Gov. J.B. Pritzker called for increased call center capacity, in large part through the implementation of new technologies to help employees handle the volume of queries. Gov. Pritzker wanted to minimize dropped calls and deliver a response to all online queries so citizens could receive the benefits they needed. This new technology, virtual intelligent agents, alleviated overburdened human agents from having to respond to every inquiry that came in.