In 2015 the UK government announced a £20 million fund to develop driverless cars. The aim is simple – make driving easier, improve safety, cut congestion and reduce pollution. The automated car industry is set to be worth £900 billion by 2025, but are people ready to take their hands off the wheel?

With the news that Google's AI has become the first non-human to qualify for a US driving license, the prospect of a future in which cars drive themselves has never been more feasible. Canvas8 sat down with 20 Brits to find out how comfortable they'd feel travelling in a driverless car.

Following Elon Musk's lead with the Tesla Model S that showed what an innovative car could look like in the future, all major car makers have been manufacturing digitally-connected cars their strategic priority. But if Gen Y aren't interested in these innovations, are they really the future?

Futurologists – those allegedly able to predict the future – are in high demand from newspapers and major companies keen to see into the coming years. Yet the vast majority of predictions are wrong. What's the appeal of future-gazing? And what might mobilise our visions into the present?