Humans are, by all measures available to science, dumb as our cave-dwelling ancestors. We like to think we've dragged ourselves up by our collective bootstraps to some high level of culture and refinement, but, as the saying goes "Society is only one meal away from revolution". We're still too tied to our material bodies. This meaty prison within which our intellect resides makes us

• sick
• hungry
• need to procreate
• sleepy / tired / lazy
• unhealthy

, and so much more. As long as we're trapped in these meat bodies we're forever going to have some restriction or other that makes us in some way susceptible to a baser instinct.

That is never more the case than bureaucracy. What is bureaucracy? Well, some say it's the method by which order is maintained. But I think we can all sit down and agree the truth.. It's there to stop people doing dumb stuff. Building regulations are to stop people using illegal materials. Marriage licenses are there to stop people lying about their marital status to get benefits or migrate to places they shouldn't.... Bank paperwork is to stop people overspending or stealing money they have no access to. See? It's all there to stop people doing stuff.

There are many examples in the literature about how Bureaucracy has been weaponised. The 27b/6 in "Brasil", Mr. Bumble getting the blame in Oliver Twist "The Law is A Ass", The entire 1962 movie "The Trial", to name but a few. It's a common trope that some automated process results in some bizarre action that ends up just making everyone's life worse.

The problem is that the buraucrats know full well why the bureaucracy is there. Look at Sir Humphrey in "Yes, Minister". He's a caricature, but often described as a "damn good caricature" of a Whitehall bureaucrat. He knows exactly why all the red tape is there, and he uses it (mostly) with aplomb to prevent MPs (almost exclusively, but not always Jim Hacker), from doing something dumb.

Because everyone knows why the bureaucracy is there, there's no point in making it easier. Why should they? People are stupid and need protecting from the results of their own actions. But this means that honest, good, efficient citizens who wish to do simple, law-abiding common-sense activities find themselves also needing to navigate horrific labyrinths of bureaucracy in order to do the most simple tasks.

Take buying something online.

• The Risk: Someone's been stupid and given their card details to a hacker.
• The Task: Buy an expensive christmas present online
• The Buraucracy: You need to fill in your card number, your end date, your card checksum, the name on the card, have the item delivered to a known location, and have the transaction confirmed in an MFA application (e.g. SMS to your phone).

What if you don't have your phone? Tough. What if it's not going to a pre-approved address? Too bad. What if it's not a site you've used before? Even worse.

The likely result is that your transaction is just flat declined and your card blocked. Even if you got everything correct, the stupid buraucracy has fraud checks which misfire half the time.

Now, it's far better (from the bank's perspective) to just ignore inconvenient little observations like;

• It's almost christmas
• you're sending it to an address you've sent it to every christmas for the last decade
• you're on an IP address you've had for years
• you're using a laptop you've been logged into your bank on
• you're using the same site you've used every christmas for the last decade
• you're buying the same product you've bought every christmas for the last two decades

All of these require "Big Data". The fraud system has to be plugged into all the metadata and has to actually use pattern detection. To have decades' worth of your purchases it needs to have a massive data lake.

And let's be honest, Banks are the laziest mofos out there. They just wanna make money, and they want to make it as hard as possible for Joe Public to make the money instead of them. Why spend all that money on a truly intelligent fraud system that tracks habits and purchases?

But, what if the programmers didn't? What if we were able to use AI? AI knows all of the above, because big data, trend analysis and anomaly detection are widely studied fraud detection methods. It's just that currently a human has to do it when you phone them because your card just got declined in a shop. You're raging angry, you phone them, wait twenty minutes looking like a pillock in the shop, and finally they answer, you say "Yes, I just bought three rolls of wrapping paper", and they say "OK, your card will be re-activated within the next 24 hours".

So they can cancel it at a moment's notice... but it takes 24 hours to reactivate it, aye?

I used the right PIN and presented the card to the chip reader which banks claim is secure, and yet it's still fraud, aye?

I use the card to buy all my normal shopping next door at Sainsbury's, but when I walk to the card shop next door, I'm suddenly a scammer, aye?

Get away! Stupid fecking humans. Banks should be ashamed of the stupidity of their fraud systems. But you can't question them. To question "security" it like questioning whether babies should be fed or left to starve.. you get the exact same look. "Whattt? Ease up on the fraud detection!?!? NEVER!!!".

So, my one hope for humanity is that we back off making AI deepfakes and stupid soulless movies. We ease up on shoehorning AI into washing machines, toasters, laptops, word processors and everything else, and instead we do what AI should be really good at: Getting rid of all the bloody bureaucracy. Let the AI watch what we do and make decisions on whether the card should be blocked, and let us talk to an AI to approve getting it reinstated. Let AI approve planning applications.... So long as the systems are built by people who actually CARE about customer service and efficiency, we could really stamp out this hateful modern society of stupidity.

Do I believe the big organisations would actually do this? not really.. They're too selfish. But I live in hope.