Comment by tajd

9 days ago

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.

4 comments

tajd

Reply
chrisjj  9 days ago

> 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.

  • tajd  9 days ago

    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"

    • jemmyw  9 days ago

      > the post office leadership appeared to assume that the software was completely correct

      Not even that. The leadership appeared to not care or care to understand what was going on. They showed a lack of competence and tried to cover it up, badly, when they realized they might be in deep shit. The software was just one part, and really just further wrapped up in leadership failure.

    • chrisjj  9 days ago

      Thanks for the clarification. Yes, any system at fault here looks more likely to be corporate than computer.

      The criminal prosecution will hopefully determine the extent to which the leadership did genuinely make that assumption.