Comment by graemep
9 days ago
its great that exists and that it got attention.
Its an immense problem that it got so little attention until someone made a TV dramatisation of it. There are definitely many other miscarriages of justice caused by the assumption that systems are always correct, and these are not being corrected.
The lack of consequences for those responsible also means there is no deterrent to others doing similar things.
I think hopefully it raises that awareness that these systems are imperfect and do not allow people to delegate their decision making totally. I'm afraid rise of AI and the increase in more plausible sounding yet incorrect behaviours won't help us there. We should use this as an instructive example on how we can built more transparent/useful systems for all of our users.
> these systems are imperfect and do not allow people to delegate their decision making totally
There's no evidence this scandal arose from software allowing any delegation of decisions.
Ah ok, potentially I was imprecise - the post office leadership appeared to assume that the software was completely correct. That is what I was trying to frame as "systems are imperfect and people should take care to validate what they are doing"
2 replies →