TED:
Should your driverless car kill you if it means saving five pedestrians? In this primer on the social dilemmas of driverless cars, Iyad Rahwan explores how the technology will challenge our morality and explains his work collecting data from real people on the ethical trade-offs we’re willing (and not willing) to make.
This is a fascinating dilemma and shows that our technology answers are moving much faster than our moral and ethical ones. Thanks to my friend Mike Rose for the link.
I was gonna say yes, but imagine if people figure out how to manipulate this algorithm to kill drivers. Yeesh.
I doubt very much that the driverless car will be able to accurately recognize the 5-vs-me situation even if it arises, since that postulates an additional “and there was nothing else I could do about it” — which is necessarily going to be contrived. However, it’s unreasonable to think I should pay for expensive technology that will choose to kill me when it’s failed to avoid an impending accident.
And this is why I will keep driving my own car.
There was some colorful and not very shy 😉 discussion of this when it landed in my Facebook feed.
Oh god, not this lame ethical scenario AGAIN. It’s a fake binary choice that almost never actually arises and what people SAY they will do almost certainly differs from what they will do.
The reason it’s a fake choice is that most people will try to save both themselves and the 5 – depending on the actual scenario they’ll brake hard, try to steer between obstacles, etc. The details matter and almost all of the time in these constructed scenarios, they’re removed. Are the pedestrians moving? What’s on either side of them? Can I brake? If so, how fast and can I turn into something to crash, avoid hitting them and yet not definitely die? Are they kids or what?
Asimov discussed this, too. Most of his robot stories (that I remember reading) were about moral quandaries.
The social dilemma is already disappearing in the rearview mirror.
My driverless taxi should park the car, kill itself, and return a job to a human driver.
I’m just as interested in discussing the moral decisions driverless cars will not make because of situations programmers did not and will not foresee.
I think it should just crash and make sure that no one survives. That’s the only plausible ethical answer. /s
Musk isn’t losing sleep. Teslas are programmed to save his life above all others.
WWBD?* Kill all humans.
*What would Bender do?
What about getting through construction? What about animals darting out (at night) in front of the car?
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And which decision do you make? Do you save yourself or the children?
Honestly, I don’t see the difference in whether an AI makes the decision on who to let live or if a human driver does, except we may feel more justified in hating the driver.
Also, see comment below about false binary hypothetical.
Captain Kirk: I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.
My driverless vehicles and other automation should allow businesses to make much more money and be taxed more, allowing a universal living wage for all the displaced workers so they can live and pursue other dreams to make any income beyond that wage.
Ideally.
Animal avoidance is being worked on:
http://blog.dailyfreepress.com/2015/11/06/volvo-incorporates-kangaroo-avoidance-into-australias-self-driving-cars/
If cars will also soon be able to navigate construction zones:
https://www.engadget.com/2015/08/26/self-driving-truck-highway-construction-florida/
Think of some more. All your hypotheticals are very likely already being worked on or solved.
Well, to the other comment’s point, I don’t believe in a no-win scenario. Human intuition and judgment will always be better than programming. But the simple answer is that if I am forced to choose between my life and the life of children, the answer is easy. I don’t need to calculate my contributions to society compared to that of others. I’d give my life to save others. It’s that easy. But it’s never, as the other comment said, a binary choice. And there is no such thing as a no-win scenario.