Several times in the past year, I've climbed aboard a jet airliner, and it has carried me to some far-flung destination abundant in sunshine and balmy temperatures.
Sunshine and balmy temperatures are two things we don't take for granted here in the UK, but another aspect of the sentence above, we do.
"It has carried me," for example. "It" being the aircraft, of course. And using the singular neuter pronoun "it" refers to something we're all acutely aware of these days, which is that it's quite possible for an aircraft to conduct most of its journey without input from the pilot and co-pilot.
By and large, our journeys aboard modern aircraft are left largely in the hands of a computer. And we just sort of...trust it.
In fact, we trust computers with a great deal these days. We trust them enough to store our priceless family photos on, and to buy expensive products across the Internet, with little more than encrypted bits of data hiding our valuable bank details from prying eyes.
We also trust that computers will coordinate systems that let those expensive products get to the place they're being stored in the first place. Or indeed, that the products will be built in the first place, using computer-controlled machines.
You'll already have guessed where this is going: Why, given all that trust put in computers, is it so hard to trust cars driven entirely by computer?
