When a software error can simultaneously shut down hospitals, air transport, ground transport, emergency services, and telecommunications, I don't see how the design of that software system should be held to a different legal standard than the design of, say, a steam turbine at a power plant, or the electrical grid itself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_CrowdStrike-related_IT_ou...

> "The outage disrupted daily life, businesses, and governments around the world. Many industries were affected—airlines, airports, banks, hotels, hospitals, manufacturing, stock markets, broadcasting, gas stations, retail stores, and governmental services, such as emergency services and websites. The worldwide financial damage has been estimated to be at least US$10 billion"

It’s because it doesn’t directly kill a bunch of people all at once in a way that causes public outcry.

If it weren’t for the many large scale “flashy” engineering disasters that caught the attention of the average person, we wouldn’t have any of the Engineering regulations we have today.

My guess is that at some point some piece of software will kill enough people or cause a large enough economic disaster that we’ll start seriously regulating it.