Why, Exactly, Are We Letting All These Machines Make Our Decisions For Us?

Your life is yours. Live it.

A few weeks ago, at a Georgia football tailgate — no, not last night’s Georgia tailgate, though if today’s newsletter reads wobbly to you at all, what happened at Sanford Stadium last night is very much the reason why — my wife and I ran into a guy we know. I like him, he’s a nice guy, but we only really see him at football games. He, like just about everybody at the tailgate for an important game that didn’t start until 7:30 p.m., including me, was pretty deep into the bourbon. He lives about three hours away, and my wife asked him where he was staying in Athens.

“Oh, we’re driving back home tonight,” he said.

My wife raised an eyebrow. “That’s quite a drive,” she said.

He smiled. “I’m not worried about it,” he said. “I’ve got the Tesla.”

This is not him.

He then explained to us just how often he lets his car drive for him. It’s a pretty regular thing! He routinely just plugs in the address of his destination, then kicks back and gets caught up on work emails. “That thing can spot a dog from 200 yards away,” he said. “It’s a truly incredible machine.” He said he wasn’t worried about a thing.

I looked at him with wonder. But I could only shrug. Grappling with my fellow Americans’ self-destructive decision-making processes is something I’ve had a lot of practice with lately, and I’ve gotten better, at last, at not letting it send me spinning off. I simply shook his hand and whistled. “You have a lot more faith in Elon Musk than I do, man,” I said. I found out later that he ended up staying in Athens and not driving, or “driving,” home that night after all. I bet that’s how he got home the next day, though. If he didn’t end up driven into a ditch.

This past Thursday, I told this story at the Thanksgiving table, thinking it would be an amusing anecdote, you’ll never believe this. I hit all the punch lines right; I love a good look at this craziness story at the Thanksgiving table. When I was done, my brother-in-law grinned. “Oh, that’s totally a thing,”…