The Danger of human

intelligence
It was 6pm in New York and the city was already awake, the sun was shining, and a great day

was announced. My apartment is well located in the midtown district at Times Square. Yes,

I’m lucky but I had to work really hard to buy it by myself so I’m proud of myself. Living in

Times Square is really practical for me. I work for the New York Times as a journalist and
it’s

really close to it. I became a journalist at the age of 22, I’m 23 now so I just began, I already

written 13 articles about various subjects like pollution in some districts, murder next to

Central Park or shoplifting. Lately there has been so much shoplifting that people decided to

do something. Surveillance cameras are useful but if the shopkeeper is not always looking at

them, the thief can take the products whenever he wants and go without the shopkeeper

knowing about it immediately. Shopkeeper noticies it when they are doing their account

at the end of the day and learns that they had been stolen, so it's very frustrating for them. The

authorities decided to put an algorithm in the surveillance camera to analisis every human

movement. When the algorithm noticies an unnatural movement, it means that someone is

stealing something. The machine emits a loud sound when the algorithm noticies the

movement. These algorithms are installed in all the sections of the store so we can know

exactly who the thief is and where he is located in the store. I’m not an expert in new

technologies so it’s difficult for me to understand all the processes of these algorithms.

My boss has asked me to write an article about this new processus, so today, I have get ready

and left my apartment.

Every morning i see a man who leaves his apartment at the same time as me , he must be the

same age as me and he always seems very calm unlike me who is always in a hurry or late.

I know he works at the book shop opposite the New York Times, not that I spy on him but

I already saw him working there while I was buying a book for an article. He starts work at

the same time as me and we finish at the same too, so we get home at the same time too,

I find this pretty funny. This morning I saw that he was wearing a new jacket. It suited him

well, he has green eyes and tanneol skin with brown hair often disheveled and I like that.

At least, I can admit that he is a handsome man.

“ Hi, Daphné !”
“ Well, we all hope so. Thank as well to you, have a great day !”

I tought it would last longer, It was 12.30 pm and I was hungry, so I decided to have

lunch in a cafe next to the store. I ordered the food and then, I started eating and

writing my article at the same time. It was now 5.15 pm when the cafe owner came

to me.

“ Hi, we have to tell you to go, Its been a while since you got here and we

have to close the shop earlier today, sorry!”

I hadn’t realized that it was so late...

“ Oh! Sorry, I didn’t even notice the time it was!”

I had almost finished my article. I went home and continued to write. It was almost

10 pm and I were completely finished writing it, I was so proud of myself.

The next day, I was too excited to give my article to Alec, my boss.

“ Hi ! I have finished the article, would you read it ?”

“ Hi Daph, yes of course !”

He read it without twisting with is eyebrows. It was a good omen for me.

“ Daph, you realize that this is a good job, i’m gonna publish it!”

I was so happy ! He gave me a day off, so I decided to go for a walk. On my way, I

heard some noise in the other street. It was the jewelry shop, I decided to see what

was going on. There were many police officers and the woman that I had

interviewed the day before. She looked disappointed but relieved at the same time.

Next to the police officer, I spotted the mom who had dropped her keys on the floor

The day before too. What was going on ? I wondered. I walked over the store.

The woman recognized me and she came to me.

“ Hi Daphne.”
“ Hi, what’s going on here ?”

“ The new process detected an unnatural movement of the woman with her

Children, she was stealing..”

She was telling the police officer that she wasn’t stealing and that she just were

showing something to her children. The police officers didn’t believe her.

“ I’m sorry the new process told us the contrary.”

I found this case unbelievable. Her children looked frightened and anxious to

see their mother acting like this with the police officers. I decided to go home.

This situation maked feel uncomfortable. In the next day, many people were

arrested, more than we had ever seen. I saw Simon one morning, he seemed happy.

We talked about all the people who had been arrested and the fact that we tought

It was weird. It was Sunday, so none of us worked today. He suggested we had coffee

together, I accepted and we went to the café between the library and the toy shop.

We talked about the new process and tried to found an explanation for all the people

who had been arrested.

“ I think that a lot of people try to steal because they have not got enough money.

What do you think?” He asked me

“ No, it’s impossible because the last person who has been arrested is Mr Jones. We

all know that this man has a lot of money, he is the owner of many shops around

here, there must be another explanation.”

We thinked about that in silence for 2 minutes when I remembered what my

grandmother used to tell me when we used to play together some logical board

games:

“ To solve a problem, you have to go back to the origin of the problem.”

I suddenly had a idea. The origin of all those arrests was the new process.

It was the only reason, maybe the algorithms interpreted the wrong things,

maybe there were bugs. Actually, It was a machine, and during all that time we have
Believe those new machines which had never been used before instead of believing

humans who could be innocent.

“ Simon !!! I have an idea and I need your help !”

He looked surprised.

“ Oh my god !! You frightened me Daphne. Tell me then !”

“ Sorry.. Ok, so the origin of all those arrestments is the new process. We don’t know

anything about it and it had never been used before, can we deduce that there might be

bugs ? Or that the algorithms interpreted the wrong things with human movements ?

To get sure of this explanation, we have to go to a store and see if we do some movements

without stealing, of the machine rings.” He gave me a flabbergasted look.

“ I know it sounds crazy but it’s the only solution.”

“ Ok so, I think that they have installed some of these machines at the toy shop. Will

we try the experiment over there ?”

“ Perfect !”

When we got to the toy store, we went to the stuffed animal department. Simon did some

movements, he took a teddy, he turned it in all directions. I took a toy brutally and

suddenly, the machine rang so loud that I let out a small cry. I was right, the algorithms

interpreted the wrong things. We immediately tried to explain our experiment to the

owner, but he didn’t believe us and called the police officers. When they arrived, we tried

Again to show us our experiment, they let us talk because one of the police officer knowed

me, he was a friend of my father’s.

“ Hey Daph, what happened ?” He looked at me with kindness.

“ Hey Jim ! we discovered that the algorithms have a problem. There is a bug in the new

process.” Everyone except for Simon looked at me oddly. It was clear they didn’t believe us.

“ Can you tell me how you got to this explanation ? It’s crazy, these new process are 100%

reliable.”

“Let us show you then.”

We did again our experiment and it worked !

“ Oh my god ! Do you mean that all the people we arrested in the past 2 weeks were

actually innocent and we prefered believing machines instead of humans ?!”

“ Yes, It’s so dangerous. It’s no our fault and not the fault of the autorithies but

we have been very naive to accept this. Now you have to remove all the penalty you gave

To innocent people and apologize to them.”

“ Yes, you’re right, we are also gonna call the authorities to tell them about the problem.”

The day after, the population was informed of the situation, they were all outraged and so

was I. My boss asked me to write an article about the serious problem we had to face.

I found this situation unreal, we have to be careful about new technologies, it can take very

Important and dangerous proportions... We decided to remove all the machines, now all the

owners have to make their store safe. They will be very alert to people in their store, It’s

more humane and It’s not dangerous...