MAGRATHEAN PUBLIC ARCHIVE – Many millions of years ago, a race of hyper intelligent pan-dimensional financial crimes experts got so fed up with the constant bickering about how to stop financial crimes that they commissioned two of their brightest and best to design and build a stupendous supercomputer to calculate the answer.
Upon building such a machine, which they named Deep Thought, they approached it to ask their question.
“Oh Deep Thought, we want you to tell us the answer.”
“The answer to what?” Deep Thought asked in all its AI brilliance.
“The answer to stopping financial crimes…money laundering, corruption…fraud. We’d really like an answer. Something simple.”
“I’d have to think about that. Return to this place in exactly seven and a half million years.” The hyper intelligent pan-dimensional financial crimes experts looked at each other. They didn’t like the answer but knew that the long wait would be worth it if they could stop the crime.
Seven and a half million years later, in the same spot that they had left Deep Thought, crowds gathered. With great fanfare and ceremony, the two experts (now much older) approached their creation.
“Deep thought, do you have an answer for us?” they asked.
“Yes, but you’re not going to like it.”
“Doesn’t matter, we must know.”
“The answer to the ultimate question… stopping financial crimes…money laundering, corruption…fraud is …42.” The crowd, once jumping and cheering with flags and streamers flying, stopped. They began booing. The supercomputer’s makers were stunned. “Yes, yes, I thought it over quite thoroughly. It’s 42.”
The crowd shouldn’t have been so surprised and puzzled by the answer given. There is no simple answer to stopping financial crimes. And while technology and supercomputers like Deep Thought can help society out, they can’t solve for everything. Sometimes the answer to the question is 42, and we are confused and outraged by it. But then again, like the experts who built Deep Thought, we asked for a simple answer to a complicated question. Financial crimes can’t be solved that way. It takes people, knowledge, technology, and time (though not millions of years) to take on these crimes.
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