You Don't Trust AI? How to Overcome Your Fears

In a recent episode of Star Trek: Discovery, the crew struggled with the question of how to trust their newly sentient ship's computer Zora. The issue of trust came to a head when Zora made a unilateral decision the crew didn't like. In the face of such insubordination, is there any way the crew could trust Zora to follow the chain of command? Today's AI is many years away from suddenly waking up sentient, but the question of trust is front and center in every professional's mind. If there's a chance that some AI-driven software might get an answer wrong – either clearly incorrect or perhaps more perniciously, subtly biased – then how can we ever trust it?