A couple years ago Patricia returned to the UK to take up an academic position at a British University. She had been out in UK for over 20 years working for universities at number of countries, and had a good professional employment record. She decided to open a bank account with one of the large banks that had branch on the campus. She met the bank manager, was given the necessary forms, duly completed them. A few days later she returned to the bank to open her account. Much to her surprise, she was told that she could only have cash account, i.e., she not be given any bank cards, cheque book, or the like, nor could she have any overdraft facility. Patricia again met with the bank manager as she naturally felt there must have been some misunderstanding. Key points here are that she already had a bank account in the UK since her student days (although this had been largely unused during her years away), she owed no money on credit cards or the like, was UK citizen, and had a good track record with bank overseas. In addition, her salary from the university was to be paid into her account each month. Despite her explaining these points, the bank manager was adamant that she could only have cash accounts. When asked to explain this decision, the bank manager indicated that it was not in fact her decision, but a decision made by an expert system. The bank always used this computer technology when making decisions about opening accounts for new clients, and in fact the bank manager could not overrule the restrictions that the expert systems imposed. In short, the expert system was empowered in the decision-making process to such an extent that it actually replaced the human decision-making process. The bank manager went on to explain that the problem was that the expert system had not previously encountered a person with Patricia’s particular background. And the key point to the computer was the extensive years of residency outside the UK.
To what extent do you think it is appropriate to replace the human decision-making process with the computer technologies such as expert systems?
- Computer can never replace human as for the fact that human itself created the computer. With these, human decision is still the best option that people got compared to computer technologies. Since computer has only limited functions as for example, the expert system, it has a limited vast of arrays which it can only perform. On the other hand, expert system may consider us intelligent cause it covers the cognitive skills which they also solve problems and create solution. Even though expert system can be considered as useful as that, still human decision-making process is still in tier 1 with the fact that it surpasses the capabilities of how computer functions in solving problem.
During the conversation Patricia asked the bank manager whether she felt that it was appropriate for the expert system to be empowered in this way. The response she obtained was that it was a great idea because computers do not make mistakes. What do you think about this comment?
- The bank manager should not be reliant to the computer in terms of the situation because it is the first time that the computer encounters that kind of situation and the bank manager should be aware that the computer has only a limited function to do. And even if it is not the first time to encounter that problem, they should have not trust or depend with the situation to the computers because there are no such things as perfect system that can support perfect reasoning. And since it is the first time to encounter that situation, they should check first the system if it functions correctly if they really entrust the situation to the computer in order to make it fair to the customers.
Do computers make mistakes?
- Indeed, as for the thought, “Nobody is perfect”. It also implies with computers so as human make mistakes so as the computer because there is no perfect system. Systems and applications are made by humans, and human do commit mistakes, so it follows the flow that computers do commit mistakes too.
Is any computerized system free from mistakes?
- For me I think there is no computerized system free from mistakes because every system has mistakes even if how small of mistakes it is. That is why every system has maintenance because system needs an update and every system needs to be constantly be renewed.
Should we be educating people to believe that computers are infallible?
- We should not instruct people to believe that computers are reliable because there is no such thing as perfect computer. What we should be educating is that computers are reliable and useful in everyday life since we are in the world which technologies or computers rapidly growing
What do you think are the ramifications of believing in infallible computerized systems?
- The consequence of believing that computerized system is infallible is that many people will be dependent on computers, but if the infallible computerized system commits a single error even if it is a tiny error still the effect of this will be big and people will still think that this small error will make their trust be lessen and some of them will not entrust their important chores by using the said system.
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