Artificial intelligence is nosing its way into every aspect of our lives, perhaps nowhere more significantly than in the workplace. As with the internet and social media before it, every industry from automobiles to wellness are falling over themselves to make the most of the available tools, especially since ChatGPT and Open AI came onto the scene at the end of 2022.
With an endless stream of products and new use “opportunities” making their way into the public realm, the boardroom urgency to adopt “the next best thing” has not quelled concerns about “hallucinations” and “deepfakes” – the invention of sources and statistics – or the use of AI by nefarious actors. The ill-thought-through adoption of technology has long been hypothesised into many a dystopian scenario, but away from the drama of grand narratives about the future of humanity is the everyday impact that results from our (increasingly) implicit trust in tech and computer power.
Set against this backdrop of technology’s increasing sway over our lives comes Mr Bates vs the Post Office, ITV’s drama about the Post Office scandal that saw over 700 sub-postmasters wrongfully convicted by their employer. Over nearly 17 years, Post Office employees were accused of theft, false accounting and fraud due to a faulty accounting system adopted by the organisation in 1999.
Brought in to replace the paper-based till system, the Horizon system was intended to save time and effort. However, poor accounting software and technological bugs saddled sub postmasters with false shortfalls of thousands of pounds.
Mr Bates vs the Post Office follows the nearly 20-year long journey of Alan Bates – played by Toby Jones – to expose the truth about Horizon. Over four episodes, we follow Jones’s determined and understated rendition of Bates as he reaches out to journalists, politicians and other postmasters in a bid to tell his story.
Alan Bates – a sub postmaster for the Llandudno branch – had his contract terminated in 2003 after the Post Office declared he was responsible for a £1,200 shortfall in his accounts. As the episodes unfold, we watch Bates and the other sub-postmasters he meets gradually uncovering the scale of the scandal and edging toward compensation.
Alongside the grand narrative of a colossal cover up, we listen in to a series of customer service calls between sub-postmasters and the Horizon helpline. It is all too relatable: a nice enough voice tells them how to fix their problem, only to make it worse. In one breath the voice will assure a sub-postmaster that no one else is having the same problem, and with the next state that “it just does” in reference to why the advice they have given – which they don’t actually understand themselves – will resolve the problem; even as it fails to do so while the call is happening.
This train of ignorance and confusion about Horizon underpins the whole script. The sub-postmasters cannot understand why they are left with deficits, the help line assistants – reading from a script as they do – don’t either and neither do the Post Office’s big players, namely its CEO Paula Vennels.
The only things that are known are that deficits were recorded. The technology could not be at fault. Why? Because it shouldn’t be. It couldn’t be. Computer doesn’t do wrong.
The wilful reluctance of the Post Office senior management to investigate is as relatable as their failure to coordinate effective troubleshooting. Systems that simplify accounting and render the receipt of cash easier aren’t first priority for repairs, particularly extensive and expensive ones. It’s all too much effort, time and money.
So the status quo continued: non-techs at the Post Office did not understand Horizon, neither had they an incentive to question the Horizon system; while Fujitsu, the Japanese electronics giant that designed it and whose record is very much under fire in Japan itself, lacked incentive to accept responsibility.
Beyond the implications of technological ignorance, Mr Bates reminds us of the centrality of the Post Office as an institution in UK life and culture. The Hampshire branch of subpostmaster Jo Hamilton, played with beautifully relatable earnestness by Monica Dolan, is the centre of her community. She is a mother, carer and friend to her clientele.
When she is taken to court, in a rare ray of light, it is her community of South Warnborough who pay for the £36,000 of losses she was accused of accruing. It speaks to the value that was placed on her, but also highlights the acute sense of betrayal that must have followed her experience.
It is rare to find a show so unifying in its demand for justice among the endless stream of content churned out by major networks that remain obsessed with abstract sociopolitical injustices that inundate the news. Perhaps that’s why we found Nadim Zahawi playing himself in Mr Bates vs the Post Office during a parliamentary committee meeting, trying to pick up some collateral credibility after his stint in government.
Twenty years after it was introduced, the UK high court found that the Horizon system was faulty and 555 sub-postmasters who sued the Post Office were compensated, though much of their winnings was consumed by legal fees. By now, more than 2,400 claims have been made against the Post Office and in March 2022 the government launched a scheme to provide equal compensation to the 555 sub-postmasters from the initial case.
The Post Office scandal is an apt reminder that politicians and the legal system should concern themselves with institutional failure and getting things running and working, rather than posing as armchair moralists. Alan Bates and the tireless efforts of his fellow protagonists offer another more important reminder: technology is not a panacea.
If the role of technology has never been greater, so too is our need to understand it and not automatically trust it more than the human heart.
(Photo credit: fiorigianluigi; iStock by Getty Images.)
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