A KAFKAESQUE NIGHTMARE

“The Trial” — Wolfgang Lettl 1981

My previous post was about AI being used in the judicial system already, and how this is bringing out and perpetuating a lot of injustices and unfair and biased practices that have always existed in our societies, especially western societies. So, this blog inspired me to imagine a Kafkaesque short story that discusses this issue. Especially one that deals with facial recognition AI gone wrong. It starts with the arrest of an innocent man and gradually builds into a surreal, nightmarish experience that echoes the great writer´s themes of bureaucracy, helplessness, and identity distortion, plus any of the modern hate-based themes of racial bias, gender identity and wokeness. Enjoy.

IT LOOKS LIKE YOU!

Jeremiah Colton, a well-dressed man in his late 30s, had just placed two coffees and a hot chocolate on the park bench for his wife and daughter. His little girl, Kayla, was spinning in circles beneath cherry blossoms when the officers arrived, not with questions, but certainty.

"Jeremiah Colton?" one asked directly.

"Yes?"

¨You´re under arrest!¨ They grabbed him forcefully. Their grip was firm and unjust. Before he could ask what this was about, he was face-down on damp grass, handcuffed, while Kayla screamed.

People stared. He caught a glimpse of his wife's pale face, her lips repeating his name like a fading prayer.

At the station, they told him his face had been matched to a robbery two towns over. “The system doesn’t lie,” the officer said, as he pointed at a blurred surveillance image on his tablet; nothing more than a shadowed silhouette wearing a hoodie. The only clear feature was skin tone.

“I’m a lawyer,” Jeremiah said. “I was in court at the time of the robbery. There are records, video.”

The officer shrugged. “Then you have nothing to worry about. It’ll be cleared up. Just routine, you know.”

But it wasn’t.

The next morning, he wasn´t released, he was transferred. The new officer had no record of his court appearance. The file had vanished. In its place was a list of alleged prior offenses he had never committed. Shoplifting in 2008. Loitering in 2012. Trespassing at a university he never visited.

“None of this is true!” he shouted.

“It’s in the system,” they said, without malice or interest.

A court hearing was scheduled, but he was not allowed to speak.

He was assigned a public defender who kept glancing at her watch. “You kind of look like the guy,” she whispered with a tired shrug. “It happens.”

“I'm a civil rights attorney!” he protested. “I know the law!”

“Yes, but does the law know you?” she asked directly, self-assured about the system.

The judge - a man behind a tinted glass wall - asked no questions. A robotic voice read out the charges while the image of “Jeremiah Colton” appeared onscreen: it was a grainy photo, distorted by digital noise. Somehow, the image looked more and more like him each time it was shown, as if the algorithm was reshaping his identity in real time.

He tried to scream that it wasn’t him, but the courtroom speakers cut out. All anyone saw was a Black man, agitated, disrupting the sacred order of things.

The judge’s gavel struck like someone forcefully closing a cell door.

Weeks passed. Or maybe months.

No one answered his calls. No one came to see him. In the prison library, he found an old mirror. When he looked into it, he didn’t see himself. He saw the grainy photo from the file. The AI's version of him. Angrier. Poorer. Unshaven. Unworthy.

One night, a guard appeared and said, “You’ve been released. They found the real guy.”

Jeremiah stumbled out, blinking into the sunlight. But his wife didn’t pick up the phone. His firm had already replaced him. His neighbors crossed the street.

On the news, a story ran: “Facial Recognition System Corrects Itself.” It showed a picture of him with a caption stating he's been cleared, placed next to the real thief.

They looked nothing alike.

But when he showed people the image, they squinted and said, “Well… I can see how the system got confused.”

He stopped arguing. After all, it was in the system now. And once you're in the system, it never really lets you go. He is a lawyer after all, and he knows that.

The End

Thanks for Reading. Abrazos

Diego Rojas