Systems in analysis?

[sawyl]

The following, from Ken MacLeod's latest, made me laugh with recognition:

Reminded, Ferguson invoked the [Police National AI]. The overnight correction work had reset the system's suspicion parameters, but in the wrong direction. After requesting arrest warrants for every one who had been on Easter Road for the past week, the PNIA was once more in the process of being talked down.

MacLeod, K., (2008), The Night Sessions, Orbit: London, 82

Even if the balky technological entities I curate don't actually suffer from paranoia, my attempts to coax them back into production often feel more like a form of psychoanalysis than they do real computing.