Why we place too much trust in machines

While many people might claim to be sceptical of autonomous technology, we may have a deep ingrained trust of machines that traces back to our evolutionary past.

As Air Flight 447 hurtled belly-first towards the Atlantic Ocean at nearly 300km per hour (186mph), pilot Pierre-Cédric Bonin wrestled with the controls. He and his crew had taken over after the autopilot suddenly switched itself off, apparently due to a build-up of ice on the aircraft. It was a situation that demanded manual intervention.

The pilots, unfamiliar with this scenario, struggled to steady the plane. Confusing messages and alarms from the aircraft's computer bombarded them and suggested the craft was not stalling when in fact it was. Bonin's last known words, captured on the flight recorder, were, "We're going to crash – this can't be true. But what's happening">Google DeepDream explores how artificial intelligence can produce dream-like art.