Catholic Union Deputy Director, James Somerville-Meikle, writes:
When I was at school, there was a popular satirical comedy on the BBC called Little Britain. One of the characters was famous for repeatedly saying “computer says no” whenever someone asked for help.
It was around this time that the first of the sub post masters and mistresses were being wrongly prosecuted for theft and fraud.
I was reminded of that this week as I watched the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office. The scandal, which saw over 700 people wrongly fully convicted, began with the decision to put ultimate trust and confidence in a computer system.
The problems with that system, and attempts to cover it up, led to a breakdown in trust in the Post Office, in politicians, and to some extent in the justice system.
Questions about whom and in what we put our trust are vitally important. As technology creeps into more aspects of our lives, and artificial intelligence takes this to new levels, we are being asked to trust more and more in computers.
Yet we know the problems this can cause, and as Catholics we have a duty to ask moral questions. Like comedians, we too are called to hold a looking glass up to society and ask if this is a world we want to live in.