Ben Norris Brings His New Play AUTOPILOT to Edinburgh Fringe

Who are we programmed to save? That's what playwright Ben Norris asks in his new show Autopilot, premiering in Edinburgh this year.

Ben Norris has been nominated for an Olivier award, and two-time UK national poetry slam champion. His debut solo show, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Family, won the IdeasTap Underbelly Award at the Edinburgh Fringe, so Autopilot - a play all about class, power and the murky ethics of self-driving cars - promises to be a must-see show.

Autopilot is a deeply modern love story counterpointing hard-hitting drama and searching moral questions with moments of irresistible humour and warmth.

Rowan is a geospatial engineer earning good money, and Nic is a freelance illustrator who is...not. They meet on a commission for public transport and hit it off. Mostly. Caught in a whirlwind of feelings, and a lot of sex, as their working relationship turns romantic, they both neglect to correct the others' assumptions, or to modify the version of themselves they first projected.

Is Nic as 'down on her luck' as she'd have you believe? Does Rowan's salary give her the security that Nic imagines? Why are they both so hesitant to introduce the other to their parents? When Rowan takes a job with a self-driving car manufacturer, Nic's lefty principles and outspoken technophobia must take a back seat, and the ideological tensions in their relationship begin to pick up speed.

Told in non-chronological order, Autopilot explores agency in the age of A.I, and the human right to make mistakes, with a structure that invites us to meditate on the consequences of our decisions and how things could have been, and could still be, different: as both humans and computers do.

Autopilot's central ethical question is the famous 'trolley problem' at the heart of autonomous vehicle design; faced with an inevitable fatal crash, should the car prioritise passengers or pedestrians? This becomes a metaphor for how we manage our relationships.

What happens when we are no longer the most important person in our own lives? Can we ever truly rely on someone, or something? How do you make plans when the plans have plans of their own? What does 'efficiency' really mean? Do we prefer human mistakes to mechanical ones because it gives us someone to blame? Who gets to decide which mistakes are forgivable? And - in the event of a head-on collision - who are we programmed to save?

Autopilot plays at Pleasance Courtyard Forth (venue 33) from August 3

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