What happens when you combine people and software of all kinds that people don't understand properly?
People die.
And it isn't just in Boeing 737 max 8's either. It is universal when software is applied to anything moving whether that be a Boeing 737 max 8 or a self driving car or a medical robot used remotely on patients.
Software doesn't know about life and death. It just does either what it was programmed to do or whatever a glitch does to it. So, could software do the opposite it was programmed for during an electrical glitch or power outage? Of course.
Also, just like in any computer, software is very corruptible which means that pieces of the software will suddenly without warning disappear without any warning and people could die. And the longer that software has been running (for years) the more likely it will corrupt at any moment?
Why?
Because most software is running on magnetic media. All you need is static electricity or a lightning strike nearby (like near a plane) and that software is going to lose programming or data. So, even though theoretically a plane is a faraday cage which should protect human beings in the fuselage from lightning strikes (in most cases) this isn't necessarily true of software which often is running at extremely low voltages which are exceedingly vulnerable to static electricity and lightning strikes. The exact same thing is true of self driving cars and autopilot software in things like Teslas and other things moving towards self driving cars.
A friend of mine was showing me a new Lexus SUV recently in Portland and telling me how if a dial was set right on this Lexus that how the brake would automatically stay set while at a stop sign or stop light. As a computer programmer since I was 18 I just immediately realized how fragile this might be and how many people might potentially die from an "automatic brake" after one brakes at stop lights in a car, for example.
Can't you imagine for example, being on a hill with a line of cars behind you and lightning striking nearby and that automatic brake failing without the driver knowing it failed and the car dropping back 10 feet and a chain reaction of 10 cars banging into each other from one program failing?
And who would the insurance company naturally blame? not the car company but the driver would naturally be blamed for the accident when it wasn't his or her fault but the fault of the software. Or one might say the driver would be blamed for believing the software was actually going to work in that situation.
This is reality folks!
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