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624 points xbryanx | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.226s | source
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cedws ◴[] No.44531505[source]
The failing is as much with the court as it is with Fujitsu. Why did they blindly accept Horizon’s data as evidence? What if the computer said the Queen stole all the money and ran off to Barbados, would they have thrown her in jail? Why was the output of a black box, which may as well have been a notebook Fujitsu could have written anything they wanted into, treated as gospel?
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rwmj ◴[] No.44531696[source]
The actual answer to this is terrible. Courts had to trust the computer was correct. There was a common law presumption that a computer was operating correctly unless there is evidence to the contrary (and getting that evidence is basically impossible for the individuals being charged who were post office workers, not computer experts, and the source code was a trade secret).

This might change, partly in response to this case: https://www.gov.uk/government/calls-for-evidence/use-of-evid...

Quite interesting article about this: https://www.counselmagazine.co.uk/articles/the-presumption-t...

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imtringued ◴[] No.44531773[source]
The emperor has no clothes. Oxford is the worlds AI Safety research hub and yet they didn't think about campaigning to overturn a law which negates their entire reason for existing?
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1. jen20 ◴[] No.44533093[source]
Arguments made towards right-wing government (which the UK had for the past decade) from higher education are unlikely to be well received. Perhaps somewhat by Cameron, certainly not in the post-Brexit idiocracy of May, Johnson, Truss or Sunak.