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Your Self-driving Car Is Programmed to Kill You
From MIT Technology Review comes this vision of the future:
How should [a self-driving] car be programmed to act in the event of an unavoidable accident? Should it minimize the loss of life, even if it means sacrificing the occupants, or should it protect the occupants at all costs? Should it choose between these extremes at random?
Not sure “random” is what I’d choose, but lets keep going:
Here is the nature of the dilemma. Imagine that in the not-too-distant future, you own a self-driving car. One day, while you are driving along, an unfortunate set of events causes the car to head toward a crowd of 10 people crossing the road. It cannot stop in time but it can avoid killing 10 people by steering into a wall. However, this collision would kill you, the owner and occupant. What should it do?
The problem, for people who will build and sell self-driving cars, is that if we know they’re programmed to kill us, we may be less inclined to buy them. We’re funny that way.
But researchers decided to explore public opinion on this very topic. They help focus groups and did some polling and came up with this conclusion. Brace yourselves:
People are in favor of cars that sacrifice the occupant to save other lives—as long they don’t have to drive one themselves.
That about sums up the entirety of the human experience.
Like anything, though, the more questions you ask the more complex it gets:
Is it acceptable for an autonomous vehicle to avoid a motorcycle by swerving into a wall, considering that the probability of survival is greater for the passenger of the car, than for the rider of the motorcycle? Should different decisions be made when children are on board, since they both have a longer time ahead of them than adults, and had less agency in being in the car in the first place? If a manufacturer offers different versions of its moral algorithm, and a buyer knowingly chose one of them, is the buyer to blame for the harmful consequences of the algorithm’s decisions?
Or, how about this: Drive your own [expletive redacted] car.
Published in Culture, Technology
This here represents why hypothetical situations are stupid.
A car should be designed to avoid hitting people and objects. A car faced with this implausible scenario should apply the breaks and attempt to steer around the crowd, while also avoiding any object which if collided with would result in the death of the passenger. Why should this be the programming for the car? Because this is what the average human driver would attempt to do. The outcome of this would result in probably an intermediate level of casualties. Less than 10 but more than 1.
But what exactly is the situation where this is the case? A group of humans walking on a narrow bridge with no rails above a deep ravine with crocodiles in the water? The car has no air bags or crumple zones, or it is traveling at incredible speeds? This whole thing is bunk! In fact I am willing to say that if 10 people are sitting on a high speed road in such a situation they deserve to be run over. Or maybe they are the victims of some B-Rate super-villain that has tied them to the proverbial rail road track. In which case why even bother to account for such a ridiculous idea. Why not demand that self driving cars be equipped with missile dogging technology, you know, just in case the same mustachioed dastard that has tied up 10 people on a bridge decides to fire them at you.
Depends. Did they vote to increase the debt limit?
The same people who promote driverless cars also are implementing “smart” electric meters. The ones where the Electric Company continually monitors your energy use, and in the future could possibly control your energy use. Seattle City Light plans to “upgrade” all their customers’ meters within the next couple of years. I have NO use for either item. I plan to retain control of both my energy use and my individually-owned-and piloted motor vehicle. Liberty!
Red Barchetta.
I want to add shame and economic-incentive to this debate being the fusionist conservative that I am. Everyone who obtains a car that swerves into a wall to save other people will be given a tax break, a medal on facebook and a bumpersticker that says, “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
Star Trek
It seems genuinely fair to me. If you place a higher value on the lives of others then you get a higher economic and cultural status. Also, every politician would have to get one of these cars to get elected. Therefore, they would die more in accidents and there would be less politicians. It’s win-win :).
Perhaps the car will decide based on your voting record and the voting record of the citizens you are about to impale. Never let a crisis go to waste!
Still better than riding with a Kennedy.
That’s good. Make sure the code writers are bipartisan.
What if it’s a paper bag with a baby in it?
That’s an excellent article by Lileks. People interested in this topic may also want to read my recent post on it.
OOOH! I have one!
What if you are driving along a lake and a baby carriage sits unattended by the roadside and a shark jumps out of the lake to eat the baby, should the car swerve to hit the shark to save the baby?
If our biggest worry about self-driving cars is that somewhere at some time ten people will be crossing a street against the light near a wall that represents the only alternative to squashing ten people at once, then sign me up!
Casey,
I called Willie my lawyer and asked about your hypothetical.
He said he would sue the parents of the baby, the baby carriage maker, the shark, the fish & game wildlife state parks dept., and whoever cut the grass on the side of the road. I asked about the grass cutting thing because that sounds excessively litigious to me. He said the fresh cut grass left there could make the shark slip up. Boy those lawyers think of everything.
Regards,
Jim
He’d go after the shark? Whatever happened to “professional courtesy”?
It takes one to know one.
Regards,
Jim
This is brilliant!
The new driverless car: the HAL 9000.
You mean a live baby or just cut up parts from the Planned Parenthood takeout window?