Person of Interest2011

Nathan Ingram:
When were you going to tell me?

Harold Finch:
I wasn't gonna tell you, I guess. I'd rather I didn't know myself.

Nathan Ingram:
All these people. And this damn machine knew. *You* knew. That someone wanted to harm them, kill them... and you d nothing?

Harold Finch:
You knew what we were building here. This thing looks for plotters, for schemers. It looks for malicious intent. We built it to stop terrorists before they could act. But a machine doesn't understand the difference between those crimes that are relevant to national security and the ones that are... irrelevant.

Nathan Ingram:
Irrelevant? So you taught it the difference? You want to play God? Is that the deal?

Harold Finch:
No, I don't. That's the whole point. There are exactly eight people in the world that know that this thing exists. If anyone else ever found out, there'd be such an outcry. They'd turn it off. The intelligence the machine produces has already foiled a half dozen major terrorist plots.

Nathan Ingram:
How are we supposed to live with this, knowing that someone out there needs help?

Harold Finch:
Well, we don't have to. I've coded the Machine. Every night at midnight, it deletes the irrelevant list. We didn't build this to save somebody. we built it to save everybody.