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A Study on Driverless-Car Ethics

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Re: A Study on Driverless-Car Ethics

#21

Post by sokoloff »

vishvananda wrote: post #3

Is it just me or does solving the moral dilemma of prioritization based on attributes of the person seem like a worthless endeavor? In practice, I can't come up with a case where it would matter. For example, a more reasonable metric for a machine to use is the probability of injury/death. If swerving is 90% likely to kill a person and staying straight is only 89% likely, then staying straight is a better choice. I d…

I will posit that killing a 9-year old or a 29-year old is actually worse than killing a 99-year old, all else being equal.

(I would hold this view even if I were the 99-year old.)

Re: A Study on Driverless-Car Ethics

#22

Post by trophycase »

b_tterc_p wrote: post #5

“ if a car detects a sudden obstacle—say, a jackknifed truck—should it hit the truck and kill its own driver, or should it swerve onto a crowded sidewalk and kill pedestrians? A human driver might react randomly (if she has time to react at all), but the response of an autonomous vehicle would have to be programmed ahead of time. ” I hate this logic. No, it didn’t need to be programmed ahead of time. It should try to…

Speaking un-ethically, the person in the car likely has fewer rights due to agreeing to some or another Term of Service, whereas the people on the street likely have not agreed to such. It may be better to kill the person in the car.

Re: A Study on Driverless-Car Ethics

#23

Post by csours »

I think philosophy and culture are important, but this meme is very silly.

Personifying self-driving systems is a great disservice and misleading. A self driving car detecting a sudden obstacle will not have time to classify anything to the extent that these stories have in mind, and certainly not to the point that humans would (leaving aside the fact that humans also would not have time to classify the items at a "sudden" obstacle).

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That being said, there are very real ethical questions in the self driving world:

1. Just because you can commute farther, should you?

2. Should more expensive cars be able to disrupt traffic for individual benefit, or should all self driving systems follow a consistent set of rules of the road to maximize throughput?

2.1 Should I be able to tweak my car to be a little more dangerous, but also quicker?

3. Should carpooling be mandated? Encouraged through tax breaks? subsidies?

4. Should self driving cars be allowed to cut through neighborhoods or be required to follow major roads around them? What about parking lots?

I'm sure there are other really interesting questions as well, but the trolley problem is not one of them.

Re: A Study on Driverless-Car Ethics

#24

Post by tempest-tost »

b_tterc_p wrote: post #5

“ if a car detects a sudden obstacle—say, a jackknifed truck—should it hit the truck and kill its own driver, or should it swerve onto a crowded sidewalk and kill pedestrians? A human driver might react randomly (if she has time to react at all), but the response of an autonomous vehicle would have to be programmed ahead of time. ” I hate this logic. No, it didn’t need to be programmed ahead of time. It should try to…

There is no such thing currently as reducing the risk of killing yourself or someone else with your car to 0. Braking distance and speed are insufficient variables to alter given people's preferences about the speed at which they'd wish to arrive at their destination. This will very likely also be the case when autonomous vehicles are deployed. There will be collisions, this is simply unfortunately a fact.

Given that there will be collisions, it seems prudent to have the car try to figure out what's better to collide with- the tree or the child. Given that there will be collisions, it also seems prudent to think carefully about other, more difficult moral dilemmas.

Refusing to code for an eventuality is itself a moral decision; inaction is an action that has an impact on the world.

Re: A Study on Driverless-Car Ethics

#25

Post by RcouF1uZ4gsC »

b_tterc_p wrote: post #5

“ if a car detects a sudden obstacle—say, a jackknifed truck—should it hit the truck and kill its own driver, or should it swerve onto a crowded sidewalk and kill pedestrians? A human driver might react randomly (if she has time to react at all), but the response of an autonomous vehicle would have to be programmed ahead of time. ” I hate this logic. No, it didn’t need to be programmed ahead of time. It should try to…

I agree with you that this example is so theoretical as to be useless. In addition, focusing on this masks some other more relevant ethical/legal questions.

1. If the car sees a police car flash it's lights for it to pull over, should it pull over unconditionally - not allowing the driver to over-ride?

2. If there is an Amber alert broadcast specifying the car, should it automatically try to alert the authorities as to it's location and/or flag down the nearest police vehicle?

3. Should a car be able to be programmed to automatically avoid going to places that would violate a restriction order on its owner or occupant.

4. If owner/occupant experiences an emergency (heart attack, impending child birth, etc), should the car have a button that will allow it to break traffic laws to try to get to the hospital faster. For example, at 2 AM on a deserted street, do you really need to wait the full time the light is red if you can see that there are no other vehicles?

Re: A Study on Driverless-Car Ethics

#27

Post by wizardforhire »

gowld wrote: post #6

Does this have anything to do with driverless cars? Driverless cars will not be programmed to target victims by race, and driverless cars' main benefit is reaction time to take simple safe actions like stopping the vehicle or turning into an open space. The car systems won't have elaborate neural nets for deciding when to jump over a pylon onto a train track.

You say this and I want to agree... but then again who are the people building driverless cars?

Unless the software is opensource how are we supposed to know? Are we so naive that we’re going to take any company’s word for it? ...and then are we so naive that we’re going to fall for the obvious plant arguments in forums against it? If the internet has taught me anything it’s that you can’t trust anyone.

Re: A Study on Driverless-Car Ethics

#28

Post by mr_toad »

b_tterc_p wrote: post #5

“ if a car detects a sudden obstacle—say, a jackknifed truck—should it hit the truck and kill its own driver, or should it swerve onto a crowded sidewalk and kill pedestrians? A human driver might react randomly (if she has time to react at all), but the response of an autonomous vehicle would have to be programmed ahead of time. ” I hate this logic. No, it didn’t need to be programmed ahead of time. It should try to…

Agreed. Swerving onto sidewalks or deliberately hitting pedestrians or vehicles is illegal anyway.

People talking about self driving ethics should spend less time reading philosophy and more time reading the road rules.

Re: A Study on Driverless-Car Ethics

#29

Post by warent »

csours wrote: post #23

I think philosophy and culture are important, but this meme is very silly. Personifying self-driving systems is a great disservice and misleading. A self driving car detecting a sudden obstacle will not have time to classify anything to the extent that these stories have in mind, and certainly not to the point that humans would (leaving aside the fact that humans also would not have time to classify the items at a "s…

Well in the case of point 2, when you have a lot of vehicles disrupting traffic for individual benefit, what you end up with is traffic as we have it today--horribly inefficient and slow for everyone. When everyone follows a consistent set of rules to maximize throughput, that's what actually leads to the maximum individual benefit.
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