Beware putting too much trust in machines ahead of people

Trust thought for today - tomorrow marks a whole year since my first post. So this week I thought I would highlight 5 of my favourites.

This is not a favourite. I chose this picture to highlight the terrible human cost of the inclination, for many reasons, to trust IT and data ahead of people. I had a letter in the Financial Times too saying as much. This is not impenetrable AI. This is bog standard accounting software. We MUST learn from this in our increasingly reliance on machines.

For those unaware of this - UK has a quite astonishing scandal featuring our previously publicly owned Post Office accusing and prosecuting more than 700 of its Post Masters and Mistresses for fraud rather than own up to the known glitches in its Fujitsu designed accounting software. As the FT said this weekend, if it were a Netflix film it would be too far fetched that so many formally trusted employees would from nowhere turn to fraud. What culture would not automatically scrutinise the tech rather than empoyees and persist in this fiction for 20 years.

It was the combination of way wilful blindness in believing data from IT, linked to a relentless focus on the need to make money, resulting in corruption, arse-covering and general moral bankruptcy at the highest level, including hundreds of employees, lawyers, the supposed association representing them. Unbelievable.

To find out more, have a look here at the special report in Private Eye of the website of fantastic investigative journalist Nick Wallis with his book, BBC TV programme and more.

https://lnkd.in/guhGC2H

https://www.nickwallis.com