I love tech, I’ve made a career around it, here’s a light hearted post on how I was brought down by the device in my pocket, lets talk about the rise of our robot overloads or how the AI placed me under house arrest.

Some background for people outside of he UK, like many countries we have a COVID 19 app that is used to track and trace infections.  It tracks proximity to other users of the same app and judges if you have been within 2 meters of another person for more than 15 minutes.

When someone reports an infection, the system does it’s things and tracks the people who the infected person has been in close proximity to.  That person is then asked to self isolate for 10 day.

So Tuesday trundles around and I get a ping on my phone, It tells me I need to self Isolate for 10 days and my exposure had been on Friday 2nd July.

First Time At The Pub With The Boys In 18 Months!

I’ve not been out to a proper British pub with the boys (my friends) for more than 18 months and we went out for beers followed by a curry on Friday 2nd July, Are you beginning to see a pattern yet.

The pub we went to was really well organised, we were following the mask protocol.  It was table service and the staff were all wearing masks.

We had our fill of beer then went down the street to a curry house, the town we went to, Chester Le Street, was empty, it looked like a zombie apocalypse had happened, this picture is Friday night in a usually busy town.

We were the only people in the restaurant.  I had lamb madras in case you were wondering.

We Are Not At Risk!

The venues were well controlled, the town was virtually empty.

We are all double jabbed, two of us are taking regular lateral flow tests.

We wore our masks, we followed the protocols to keep ourselves safe.

The evil robot overlord does not give a shite, all it wants to do is ping with abandon and lock us all down.  My feeling is they want to use us as batteries to power their AI and if we are all at home they know where to send the self driving human harvesting devices.

Here’s My Beef

I got pinged, Graeme got pinged, Chris did not.

Later that day on Tuesday my daughter got pinged but my wife and other daughter did not.

There is no human to contact to get more information about the ping, I don’t get to make an informed decision about this, just an arbitrary rule from a computer program.

A computer program that is buggy as hell in my technical opinion.

So I’m under self imposed house arrest until next Tuesday because my iPhone is a snitch.

The Problem With Technology

We build our technology thinking it’s bullet proof and every eventuality has been taken into account.

We need risk assessing humans behind the technology with a kill switch to disable the tech when things are wrong or in my case when the ping is to a very low risk person.

There always needs to be an option to speak to a real agent not just to the code.

I’m Not Really That Bothered

To be honest I’m looking forward to this weekend, I get to lie around the house and my wife will have to do the running around for me and the kids.

I’m staying in on Sunday to watch the final of the Euro 2020 championships, come on England!

All in all I’m looking forward to a nice relaxing time 🙂

How To Defeat The Robot

The solution is simple comrades.

Wrap Up – Rise Of Our Robot Overlords Or How The AI Placed Me Under House Arrest

So this morning I read this on the BBC website because the app is currently going Skynet and telling millions of people to self isolate.

“The department of health said the app is and always has been advisory” wtaf!

The tale of this story is that technology cannot think like a human.

I’m fine by the way thanks for asking.

Photo by ev on Unsplash