Algorithms of Life and Death: The Ethics of Self-Driving Cars Research Question Self-driving cars will inevitably have to face the dilemma of who to protect, or conversely, who to harm, in the event of an unavoidable accident. Whilst human drivers are forced to make split-second decisions when confronted with an imminent accident, self-driving cars will be programmed with algorithms that will direct their actions when faced with such incidents. For example, when confronted with a group of wayward pedestrians, a self-driving car may have two courses of action: protect its occupant, or, take evasive action to save the pedestrians, though at considerable risk to, or even certain loss of, the occupant's life. Thus, the core question of my proposed …show more content…
Is it ever acceptable, ethically speaking, to program a self-driving car to sacrifice its occupants? Should every self-driving car be programmed with the same algorithm, or should occupants be able to select from a multitude of algorithms? How do we compare and weigh different types and quantities of harms across different people? What are people's intuitions and expectations regarding self-driving car algorithms? …show more content…
I will focus on the current literature dealing with the ethics of self-driving cars, paying particular attention to work that has an emphasis on the question of algorithms, such as Leben's (2017) formulation of Rawlsian algorithms. From here, I intend to review the applied ethics literature (Singer 2011), as well as work on ethical theory more broadly (Parfit 1984, 2011), in order to develop a deeper understanding of different ethical frameworks. In doing so, I will critically reflect on the literature and assess the practical applicability of the various ethical theories to the problem of self-driving cars. Another area of importance is the literature on harm (Norcross 1997) and killing (McMahon 2002), due to the fact that algorithms will need to tackle scenarios where different agents will be inflicted with different types, degrees, and quantities of harms – and death – which will require evaluation and comparison. Additionally, I will make use of empirical data that has been collected – primarily by psychologists and experimental philosophers – through surveying the general public on self-driving cars, in a bid to understand their expectations and intuitions regarding different types of algorithms. These studies have typically been conducted by presenting participants with moral dilemmas that see self-driving cars faced with unavoidable accidents where some degree of harm is inescapable (Bonnefon, Shariff, & Rahwan
Now, I am very intrested in cars and I love almost every aspect of them, but did you know, that each year 1 million, people die each year from car accidents? And 81% of these accidents are caused by human error? 1 million people, gone like that. Fortunately, there's a new technology that dramastically decrease this number. This technology is self-driving cars. A self-driving car is a car that is capable of sensing its environment and navigating without human input. Currently, about 33 companies including Tesla, BMW, and Google, are working to create self-driving cars that can prevent human errors and change the way people view driving. Self-driving cars, have other benefits besides preventing human error, such as less traffic congestion, and less fuel consumption. However, with these benefits come some costs such as cyber security problems and ethical dilemmas. So, should we have self-driving cars, or not?
Who’s to blame when the vehicle gets in a severe car accident? Advances in technology, like self-driving cars, will be bad because it causes people to be lazy, it takes away the responsibility of the driver, it takes away the responsibility of the driver, and it can malfunction causing accidents.
Under Kantianism it would be an immoral action, but frankly that is what I would do. If I was giving the programmer directions on how I wanted my self-driving car to perform knowing that it was a matter of saving my family or strangers, I would have to choose my family. Under Kantianism it would be immoral to sacrifice my innocent child to save three people whose actions were libel for the accident because according to Kant taking a life or in this case choosing to sacrifice the innocent child to save three lives is absolutely prohibited and therefore immoral (Ryan). The twist to this for me is if I was driving the car and had to make a decision in this to hit three people or hit a wall, I am not sure my decision would be the same because I am not sure it would enter my mind that it was them or us in that split-second
In source #3 paragraph 4 it says “surveyed people want to ride in cars that protect passengers at all costs-even if the pedestrians would now end up dying.” This is important because the self driving cars create a conflict between society, about who the car could save. Also those surveyed people are in conflict with themselves, trying to decide what outcome could be better. In source #3 paragraph 13 it states “people imagined actually buying a driverless car...people again said pedestrians-protecting cars were more moral...people admitted that they wanted their own car to be programmed to protect its passengers.” This shows when you actually think about the reality of having a driverless car, you wouldn’t want to die in an accident when you could have been saved. As a pedestrian you wouldn’t want to get hit by a car when you could have been saved. There are different perspectives you have to look at. In conclusion this shows that society still isn’t sure about a self-driving
In the past couple years, there has been a greater drive in making cars more technology based. The solution: self-driving cars. There are many different views on these new cars. Personally, I don’t think that they are practical. Self- driving cars are expensive and will not even expunge the risk of car accidents.
Since the advent of autonomous technology, self-driving cars have been expected to be the best solution to optimizing daily commuting efficiency meanwhile significantly reducing or even preventing traffic accidents and fatality by rectifying and removing possible human errors on the road. As the deeper research goes on, however, the ethics of driverless cars become a major concern: self-driving cars must make their own decisions at any circumstances, which also means that such vehicles must be pre-programmed to respond ethically to certain emergencies. Concerning quite broad range of ethical issues, such algorithms should be rather convoluted. Without any perfect solutions so far, social expectation of ethical principles should be a logical
The goals behind self-driving cars are to decrease collisions, traffic jams and the use of gas and harmful pollutants. The autonomous automobile is able to maneuver around objects and create swift lines of cars on roadways (How Google’s self-Driving Car Works, 2011). The autonomous vehicle can react faster than humans can, meaning less accidents and the potential to save thousands of lives. Another purpose and vision for these cars is that vehicles would become a shared resource. When someone needed a car, he or she could just use his or her Smartphone and a self-sufficient car would drive up and pick him or her up.
Although auto cars offer many advantages, there are arguments against the use of these vehicles. First stands the possibility of conflicting ethical issues. If a self driving
You are programming a driverless car for may involve a moral dilemma. If a foreseeable situation of killing 5 children or avoiding all of them and you autonomous car is programmed to kill you instead as the course of least harm then the liability question is, who – or what is responsible?
In July 12, The New York Times reported a news: “Inside the self-driving Tesla fatal accident”, which again caused enormous debates on whether self-driving cars should be legal or not.
Companies like Google, Tesla and Nissan, among others, have announced over the past few years that their companies are trying to develop self-driving or autonomous cars [Ref. 1 and 2]. Self-driving cars can provide many benefits to the average consumer. Studies have shown that because computers can react and process information many times faster than a human being, crashes on streets and roads can be decreased with quick and consistent evasion maneuvers by the autonomous car. They can also help maximize fuel economy by calculating the most direct and fastest routes. When the driving of an autonomous car demonstrates that the computer can safely and reliably transport the passengers to their destination, this frees up the passengers to do other things that they would not normally be able to do if they were driving the car manually. For this reason, self-driving cars can help maximize productivity of their passengers.
Driverless cars kill people. With the years flying by, driverless cars seem very close to coming into the world. New technology comes with new issues all the time. Sometimes these problems don’t matter, but people must see the issues with the driverless car. Driverless cars should not be utilized due to the massive ethical programming debate and technical problems that make the car’s safety questionable.
Self-driving cars are the wave of the future. There is much debate regarding the impact a self-driving car will have on our society and economy. Some experts believe fully autonomous vehicles will be on the road in the next 5-10 years (Anderson). This means a vehicle will be able to drive on the road without a driver or any passengers. Like any groundbreaking technology, there is a fear of the unforeseen problems. Therefore, there will need to be extensive testing before anyone can feel safe with a vehicle of this style on the road. It will also take time for this type of technology to become financially accessible to the masses, but again alike any technology with time it should be possible. Once the safety concern has been fully addressed
It might be hard to see where the self-driving car could have issues with safety but an interesting question arises when an accident is unavoidable. The question posed is “How should the 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?” (ArXiv). This is a very interesting question surrounding ethics. I’m not sure if there is a right answer to the question, which could stall the self-driving car industry. Before self-driving cars are mass produced a solution needs to be found to the question about unavoidable accidents. Although this question is a problem, there may not be a need to address the problem. It is said that “"driver error is believed to be the main reason behind over 90 percent of all crashes" with drunk driving, distracted drivers, failure to remain in one lane and falling to yield the right of way the main causes.” (Keating). Self-driving cars could eliminate those problems entirely and maybe with all cars on the road being self-driving cars, there would be no “unavoidable accidents”. Safety is the main issue the self-driving car is trying to solve in transportation and seems to do a good job at
Automotive executives touting self-driving cars as a way to make commuting more productive or relaxing may want to consider another potential marketing pitch: safety (Hirschauge, 2016). The biggest reason why these cars will make a safer world is that accident rates will enormously drop. There is a lot of bad behavior a driver exhibit behind the wheel, and a computer is actually an ideal motorist. Since 81 percent of car crashes are the result of human error, computers would take a lot of danger out of the equation entirely. Also, some of the major causes of accidents are drivers who become ill at the time of driving. Some of the examples of this would be a seizure, heart attack, diabetic reactions, fainting, and high or low blood pressure. Autonomous cars will surely remedy these types of occurrences making us