American Detective: Starting as a Rookie Cop in an American TV Show

Chapter 1300: Finch's "Pandora's Box"

Finch shook his head stiffly. "The 'machine' simply didn't notice it. I reviewed the details of the case afterwards and found that almost all of the attackers belonged to the '3%'.

In addition, the planner carefully used an anonymous mobile phone, abandoned it and replaced it with a new one after each call, which resulted in the machine not predicting this terrorist threat. "

He paused, then added, "Of course there are other reasons, such as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) failing to upload key intelligence collected into the system in a timely manner."

Jack had an expected expression on his face. Just as he had previously speculated, no matter how good a tool is, it is still used by people. Putting aside the issue of AI making mistakes due to information contamination, humans are bound to make mistakes.

And for some reason, Finch imposed a lot of restrictions on the "machine", not only making it an airtight "black box", but even the basic dialogue function was not added in the beginning.

In other words, the current "machine" theoretically does not have the ability to communicate with humans. The NSA inputs data into it through the port, and it will spit out a series of "SSNs" at a fixed time every day.

The "3%" that Finch refers to are those who do not have a SSN.

SSN is the abbreviation for Social Security Number. The vast majority of federal citizens and legal permanent residents (green card holders) have an SSN, which is usually obtained at birth or during the immigration process.

But the problem is that there are a lot of illegal immigrants in the United States. Although this data fluctuates greatly due to differences in different institutions and statistical methods, it is generally believed that the number of illegal immigrants in the entire federation will not be less than 1100 million.

According to the IRS, less than half of those 1100 million people use another type of identification number, an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN.

The rest of the population either use forged or borrowed SSNs or simply do not have one. In addition, there are some Amish people who insist on traditional lifestyles and even still ride in horse-drawn carriages when they go out.

These Protestant Anabaptist Mennonites are extremely averse to even cars and electricity, and their language is a very unique High German dialect. They are almost invisible in the federation, and their number is probably more than 30.

Although not all Amish are so extreme that they don't even have an SSN, extreme factions do account for a considerable proportion of them.

In addition, there are people who have not been counted for various reasons. According to rough estimates, all such people account for nearly 3.3 million of the federation's 1000 million population, which is what Finch called "3%."

In fact, this statistic is very problematic, but it is enough to illustrate certain problems.

This means that these groups of people are almost invisible to the "machine". Although it can monitor them through other means, such as phone monitoring and video surveillance, it takes hundreds or thousands of times more computing power to achieve this.

Just like what the "Dark Jihad" did in the past, they first used those undocumented illegal immigrants to test the police's response speed, and then transported dangerous goods collected from all over the country into New York through the channels of drug trafficking gangs.

By the time the "machine" realized through its algorithm that something was wrong and spit out a long string of victims' SSN numbers to warn that a major terrorist attack was about to occur, Jack had already driven the overloaded ambulance into Central Park.

"The 'machine' is not omnipotent. Although it has been evolving and is now intelligent enough to defend itself against all forms of invasion, it is still immature after all."

Finch, like an old father protecting his child, tried patiently to explain the reasons to everyone, but as more and more difficult words came out of his mouth, Jack couldn't help but interrupt him.

"In fact, we are more concerned about the 'irrelevant information' you mentioned before, or you can say 'irrelevant number'. Is this the main reason why you found Reese last night?"

As the most professional among the group, Alice was the one who truly understood how great a genius "Mr. Finch" was, who seemed to be always defeated when facing Jack. She almost immediately figured out why Jack had gone through all that trouble before, arranged for Jessica to fake her death, and even put her in the witness protection program.

Jack must have known about the existence of the "machine" and its general operating mechanism for a long time, and was deliberately testing it.

"According to my original settings, the 'irrelevant numbers' output by the 'machine' every day will be automatically destroyed at midnight, but I overlooked one thing. Once the 'Pandora's Box' is opened, it can never be closed again."

Finch looked painful. "Those 'unrelated numbers' made me suffer. Those who were about to be harmed didn't know what they were going to encounter, and I could only watch it all happen."

Everyone had different expressions when they heard this, including Clay who was used to separations and deaths. Almost everyone here could understand and even empathize with his thoughts.

We are all in this line of work, and every case we handle is like looking directly into the abyss. Although everyone is trying hard not to empathize with the victims, how can that be as simple as talk?

After each case, no matter how serious it was, Jubal would try his best to get as much leave as possible for everyone, and he would also spend a lot of time with his children.

Hannah would often lock herself in her room to play games for the whole day, Jiejie would go shopping with her girlfriends, and when Clay had nothing to do, he would take Aubrey to the gym to exercise, or go to the boxing ring with Jack.

Even Jack would spend a lot of time in the backyard or the kitchen every time he returned to the base building.

Alice didn't need to guess, she blurted out, "You set up a backdoor on the 'machine' to intercept those 'irrelevant numbers'?"

"What can I do?" It is obvious that the "Pandora's Box" that Finch mentioned does not refer to the good or bad of the "machine", but simply means that he has been subjected to a similar "curse".

"I can't just stand by and watch all this happen. I've thought about it, but some things are like a curse." His words were a little vague, but Jack understood what he meant.

In fact, the first person to be "cursed" was not Finch, but his good friend Nathan.

Nathan was the one who initially opposed Finch's destruction of the "irrelevant numbers". When the "machine" was still in the training stage and had not yet been delivered, he used his authority to secretly leave a backdoor.

The two had an argument about this, and Nathan was even radical enough to want to disclose the existence of the "machine". However, Finch had actually realized that someone was secretly eyeing the "machine" at that time, and strongly opposed Nathan's doing so.

The end result was that the "machine" spit out Nathan's SSN, and Finch didn't notice.

The next day, the two met at the dock. A car on the side of the road suddenly exploded. Nathan died on the spot, and Finch became what he is now.

Due to spinal injury, his head can only turn no more than 30 degrees to the left or right, and he now walks with a limp.

"So, Jessica appeared in the previous number, that's why you said sorry when you saw me." Reese suddenly realized.

(End of this chapter)