[bostik]

> Always a machine at the root of the problem.

I have a perfect example of this.

Years ago, my mom's coworker discovered that her bank card no longer worked. ATM's would error. Online systems would reject all transactions.

So she went to a bank branch to sort it out. After explaining to the teller her situation, the teller brought up her account details, looked up from her monitor and said, on a straight face: "You are dead."

What had happened was that she had had a full namesake who had also had an account in the same bank. When the other person had died, and her estate had closed the accounts, the person doing the account termination had only looked up account owners by their full name. Closed all of them, with the explanation "account holder deceased".

Human errors happen. So do computer errors. It only becomes a problem when humans rely only on what computers tell them. This particular bank teller didn't even realise that the facts stated by the computer were contradicting what was literally standing in front their eyes.

Critical thinking is a dying trait.

[TeMPOraL]

> This particular bank teller didn't even realise that the facts stated by the computer were contradicting what was literally standing in front their eyes.

It may be more complex though. The machine can be wrong, but so can your eyes. The previous customer coming to that teller with the same situation might have been someone who stole the identity of a deceased person. You can't just assume the machine is wrong because it disagrees with what you see.

This is also not the problem of machines per se, but of large systems - where different parts are handled by different people who don't know each other (or may not even be aware of each other's existence), and a set of fixed procedures (i.e. meatspace algorithms) are used to coordinate everything.

[jeandejean]

Isn't it exactly a human error that you are describing? The root cause was a distracted employee that input wrong information in the system, not the system being flawed...

[bostik]

Sure, the root cause was incompetence when closing down accounts but that is not the problem.

The real problem manifested in human blindly accepting what the computer told them. If there is no reason, or even NEED to apply critical thinking, why is there a human involved at all? This is not an indictment of automation over human labour. I would rather that humans are in the loop precisely because they have the ability to spot these kinds of errors - and help to correct them. Computers are good at repeating mundane tasks. Humans are not. We should be making most of their distinct abilities, not molding the two into same form.

Now, Temporal rightly pointed out that this might have been a case of attempted fraud. But if you are trying to spot fraud, spotting anomalies and being critical on what you accept as objective truth should be on the top of your mental map.

[akiselev]

The root cause was a system that allowed a potentially incompetent employee to indiscriminately close bank accounts without at least a date of birth or social security number confirmation. It's a problem that could have been prevented with a four to eight digit input field and an if statement.

The system isn't flawed only in the sense that the bank doesn't give a shit. They get to reap the returns on your capital either way.

[clarkmoody]

Well the problem was that of identity. The bank assumed that a namesake was the same person, rather than relying on a more unique identifier.

[maxerickson]

Are you sure the teller didn't just have a dry wit?

Or did they then proceed to refuse to deal with the living dead person?

[cr0sh]

So what happened to the money in the account? I mean, when you close an account(s) of a deceased relative at a bank (presuming you have the legal right to do it - it takes more than just "showing up" and claiming such), the money is generally withdrawn and processed as a cashiers/bank check (depending on the amount - for certain large amounts, there may be a wait period) - and given the person closing the account(s).

...so - what happened to your mom's co-worker's money?

[bostik]

The bank refused to admit error, at first. It took more than two weeks of constantly being on the phone and pestering before they reopened the account.

In the meanwhile, it was pure luck that she didn't have any critical expenses, such as taxes during the time window.

The bank never issued an apology.