We recently learned that the strikes in Gaza are being carried out through artificial intelligence. This way, people can wash their hands of any potential ‘mistakes’.
Before artificial intelligence, there were other smart systems, which sometimes turned out not to be so smart after all, and the consequences of their deficient intelligence were disastrous.
This is what happened in the UK with the software used by the Post Office, which ruined the lives of hundreds of people and their families, but the government refused to acknowledge culpability until a TV series turned everything upside down while also highlighting the role that serious television can play.
In the 1990s, in collaboration with a Japanese company, a software system was developed for the country’s Post Office. The software, named Horizon, showed financial losses, resulting in 900 Post Office managers across the country being hauled before the courts. Some ended up with convictions for false accounting, mismanagement, and theft, while others were sent to prison. Many were financially ruined and treated as pariahs by their communities. Some, despite being innocent, chose to cover the apparent losses with their own money, mortgaging their homes. And a few, at least four, took their own lives.
After a 20-year legal battle, the Supreme Court ruled in 2019 that the Horizon software was responsible for the errors. Even though problems with its functioning were reported very early on, the Post Office’s management ignored the complaints, accusing branch managers of mismanagement. Even after the court ruling, only 93 of the accused were exonerated.
The case resurfaced in January following the broadcast of a TV series by ITV, titled ‘Mr Bates vs the Post Office’, which tells the story of one of those affected, Alan Bates, and his quest for justice, as well as the stories of many others who were wrongly accused. A pregnant woman was sent to prison, and another man, Mr Castleton, describes how his daughter was bullied and developed an eating disorder, while he was forced to travel far for work and slept in his car.
The protagonist, Mr Bates, recounts how when he reported that something was wrong, he was told he was the only one experiencing problems with Horizon. However, he discovered others in the same situation, and they formed a group, eventually, after a series of setbacks, achieving the 2019 court ruling with very limited resources.
Following the shock caused by the TV series, which was watched by 3.5 million viewers on its first episode and 9 million by the next, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised to introduce a law to clear the names and compensate all the victims.
These are the consequences when we place blind trust in artificial wits.
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