Faith in technology can turn into prison – 03/31/2024 – Ronaldo Lemos

A friend is renovating his apartment and asked me if he should put “automation” in it. The idea is to allow functions such as lighting, air conditioning, ambient sound and others to be controlled, for example, through a cell phone application, and from anywhere.

At the time I remembered a meeting with Vint Cerf –one of the founders of the internet– in 2012. Cerf said that we live in a world where we can no longer trust software. He commented that when he saw a software-controlled elevator, he swallowed hard. In his words: “We have billions of devices interacting with each other. It’s as if we are doing billions of experiments with pieces of software that have never met before.” The warning is that we are throwing everything on the internet, without thinking about cybersecurity or the unpredictable consequences of this.

To my friend, I said that “automation” in homes is often done with a precarious level of security. Malicious agents can interfere with the functioning of devices. The data generated can end up being monitored, revealing the routine of the house, how many people are there, if there are visitors, on what days and times, for how long and so on. Not to mention the high probability that in five years (or less) all the equipment will be obsolete.

But there is another tragic case about unconditional faith in technology, which occurred with the post office in England. The company purchased software to carry out unified accounting for its 13,000 branches, most of which are operated by franchisees. But the software (called Horizon and provided by Fujitsu) was flawed. For example, the screen sometimes froze when registering a cash payment. The user would instinctively press the enter key to see if anything happened. Without warning, the software counted each keystroke as a new payment received, which never occurred.

This and other errors ended up leading to accounting discrepancies between the franchisees’ cash flow and the post office’s centralized accounting. The result of this was dramatic. The post office sued its franchisees, accusing them of accounting fraud. In total, 900 people were convicted of theft, embezzlement and fraud. Several of them served sentences in a closed regime. Families were destroyed, they lost their homes and jobs. It took 16 years to clarify everything that had happened.

The English Post Office chose to truly believe in the software rather than listen to hundreds of people. It was only after a collective action proposed by 550 franchisees, organized years after the problem began, that the situation began to be reversed.

At a time when we are beginning to hand over control of our lives to artificial intelligence, the case of the English postal service serves as a warning. Artificial intelligence is software like any other. We will need to work on not trusting her without further questioning. Unconditional faith in technology can literally be a prison.

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It’s over – Apple as the most valuable company on the planet

Already – Microsoft as the most valuable company on the planet

It’s coming – Nvidia, today in 3rd place, fighting for the position of Apple and Microsoft

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