Beam CEO criticizes Silicon Valley’s focus on convenience — Fortune

In the United States, Beam CEO and co-founder Alex Stephany wrote in a column for Fortune that the technology industry primarily creates services that make the lives of well-off people more convenient. In his view, software and artificial intelligence should be used more actively to support social service workers and people who need assistance.

Errors in assistance programs

Stephany cited data showing that an average of 42.1 million people used the SNAP food assistance program each month in fiscal year 2025. This represented 12.3% of the U.S. population, or approximately one in eight people.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the nationwide SNAP payment error rate in fiscal year 2025 was 10.62%, while the volume of improper payments reached $10.1 billion. Approximately 87% of the errors were overpayments, while about 13% were underpayments to families eligible for support.

More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.

The author stressed that the USDA does not classify these cases as fraud. In his view, errors are mainly caused by a large volume of paperwork, outdated systems, handwritten records, and worker exhaustion.

Administrative burden

A federal study by the Administration for Children and Families, released in 2025, showed that child protection specialists spend an average of 4.3 hours of their workday on paperwork and documentation. According to data cited in the column, the average annual staff turnover rate in the U.S. child protection system is about 30%.

Stephany said that ten years ago, he stopped developing services for everyday convenience and began creating technologies for social services. According to him, Beam operates in five countries, while government agencies in 12 U.S. states use its tools to halve the administrative burden. The company’s first U.S. partner was Fairfax County, Virginia.