Self-Driving Car Ethical Dilemmas

When someone brings up the term “artificial intelligence”, a variety of connotations tend to arise, connotations that often are unfair or unrepresentative of the true real-world applications of such a term. Due to the incidentally fear-mongering nature of the media, artificial intelligence can refer to something as basic as a robotic arm in a factory, as well as the implied extinction and/or enslavement of the human race as caused by robo-revolution. As of today, however, when applied in the world of modern technology, artificial intelligence is defined as any innovation that performs a task usually completed by humans. Of course, with this definition, artificial intelligence holds the potential for both societal harm and benefit, and its fate

While Hollywood’s interpretations of futures where robots take over the human race are highly entertaining, the movie predictions may not be so far from present times. Take the example of the artificially intelligent robot Ultron, from Avengers: Age of Ultron, who was programmed with the task of achieving world peace. Without any specifications, he believed this goal would only be achieved by abolishing humankind. Artificial intelligence (AI), takes instructions very literally and the results will be disastrous in both a physical and mental sense when it starts thinking for itself. In essence, self-driving cars create moral dilemmas and safety concerns regarding artificially intelligent technology being programmed to coexist with humans.

As seen by the moral dilemma restricting the growth and ubiquity of smart-cars, artificial intelligence has been relegated to being the lesser mind. Computers may be able to calculate at greater speeds, and outperform the human mind, but the dimension of values within the human mind can never be trumped by this amalgamation of hardware and software. In order to create and use technologies that are able to make decisions involving ethics, there needs to be a clearly defined partition. The reason being that said principles are not delineated in any omnipresent

Similarly, the article “The Moral Challenges of Driverless Cars” explains how driverless cars will be a safer alternative. It explains how humans are more prone to cause an accident than the driverless cars. The article describes the processing behind the vehicles and some problems they face while making them along with how this will delay their production. It also clarifies how the cars will be able to make the decisions that will keep people safe instead of putting them in harm’s way. Finally, the article describes the ethical issues and automation in cars today. According to Kirkpatrick, the cars are equipped with software that determine what reaction to make in different situations that would take a human more time to make, therefore, avoiding an accident. As stated in this article, there is still much work to be done before the cars are actually ready to sell to the public.

When dealing with autonomous cars, there are many ethical questions raised that need to be answered before they are released on the road. Like if the vehicle is in a situation where it would either hit a person or an oncoming car, which would it choose? Or would the vehicle choose to crash itself into a wall, possibly injuring the occupants?

This opinion article addressing the cons of the rising technology of self-driving cars will be published in the LA Times. Readers of the LA Times are educated, affluent citizens who tend to have liberal ideologies.

The influx of legislation can be linked back to the success of the first initiative relating to autonomous vehicles, and it is likely that autonomous vehicle legislation will continue to be introduced at the state level throughout the country.Google Inc. has approached several major car insurance underwriters to gauge the coverage implications of its driverless car technology available to the commercial market. (Matt & et.al., 2012). Perhaps the biggest obstacle facing self-driving cars is, not surprisingly, the lawyers. The good news is that this technology should dramatically reduce the 30,000-plus annual fatalities on the nation 's highways (Walker 2012).About four years ago, when Google team was trying to develop cars

Mant skeptics wonder how do you go about programming ethics into a car? These people cite the trolley problem as a thought experiment in automated vehicular decision making. Noah J Goodall who works with the Virginia Transportation Services wrote an article on the difficulties of having to quite literally program ethics into a car. Driving involves inherent risk and these self driving vehicles must be a comprehensive exercise in risk management. However, doing so can have unintended consequences. Goodall explains that self driving cars make judgement calls as it is to break the law. For example, Google allows their cars to go faster than designated speed limits to keep up with the flow of traffic as going slower might be dangerous to the vehicle and its occupants. Even in following the law Google’s cars make small ethical decisions. A 2014 patent was filed describing how Google’s cars position themselves within a lane closer to a small vehicle than a large one to maximize the vehicle’s safety. However, in programming cars to behave a certain way, humans are creating unintentional consequences in a device that takes everything literally. A simple example of this is what if cars were designed to prioritize the life of the pedestrian over all others. In the event a crash is imminent with a pedestrian the car is forced to swerve, this could kill the passenger or other people in society. In

Self driving cars are, without a doubt, the future of the automobile industry. Although this technology could be extremely beneficial, some tough decisions come along with it. It seems preposterous to use the term “adjustable ethics” when discussing situations that can lead to life or death. How can ethics, an extremely human characteristic, be transferred into a machine without a real understanding of the world around it? By definition, adjustable ethics are decisions made based on the situation surrounding a person, and how they would apply their moral beliefs to that situation. Although innovation has created incredible technology that could save many lives and practically eliminate crash fatalities, there seems to be no concrete answer

In the case of an accident, I believe the autonomous vehicle should be programmed according to the utilitarian philosophy in order to be most ethical. The utilitarian philosophy would cause the car to react in a manner that would cause the least amount of harm to the least amount of individuals involved in the accident (Ferrell, Fraedrich, & Ferrell, 2013). I believe this to be the most ethical way to program the autonomous vehicle since this would not force the vehicle or the programmer to choose the importance of one life over another. This route would cause the least amount of harm to all involved and will also free the driver of being the one to make the decision of which crash option would be deemed the safest crash option.

In this current year, autonomous cars are being tested and manipulated by automobile manufacturing companies around the world. Toyota plans to introduce its first models that are capable of self-driving to the market by 2020… and BMW intends to launch its self-driving electric vehicle, which it calls the BMW iNext, in 2021. The US Secretary of Transportation, Anthony Foxx, has even directly stated that he expects driverless cars to be in use all over the world within the next 10 years. While these cars are promising in that they could potentially reduce the number of car crashes- and thus, prevent many deaths from occurring- they also foreshadow many unavoidable ethical dilemmas. One dilemma that is commonly addressed relates to deciding how a machine should react in a dire situation where it can either choose to save the driver of a vehicle- killing innocent bystanders on the side- or to save the bystanders, while killing the human (who is also most likely also innocent) that is driving the vehicle. I don’t believe there is a way to create or find an absolute answer to this dilemma, as every person will have his or her own

I focused my research on Stanford scholars, where researchers were debating key ethical issues that will arise when humans turn over the wheel to algorithms. According to the scholars, there has being a lot of concerns on how driverless cars will change the world in either positive or negative ways and the debates focus mainly on those impacts. Most of the significant ethical questions and concerns the Stanford debate on when it comes to letting algorithms takes the wheels are:

In class and in previous readings we have learned that Ethics is involved in every aspect of Engineering. The article “Here is a Terrible Idea: Robot Cars with Adjustable Ethics Settings” is a good example that shows off the great importance of ethics in engineering. It is about the future adoption of autonomous cars and the ethical dilemmas associated with them. Specifically, it talks about the infamous Trolley problem when applied to autonomous cars. The scenario presented by the article consists of a person driving her autonomous car and not realizing that she is about to collide with five people crossing a road. The car could then save the life of the five people by quickly swerving into another direction. However, there is another person there, and if the car swerves she would be impacted instead. The autonomous car is then in charge of making the decision of what is the right thing to do in this kind of situation. From a utilitarian’s point of view, the consequences of an act are the only thing that matters for it being right or wrong. The right act is the one that will yield the maximum sum of pleasure for all entities involved. Therefore, in the trolley problem applied to autonomous cars, for a utilitarian the right choice would be to swerve right and kill that one innocent person instead of the other five people. Although not presented in the article,

Self-driving is an intriguing topic as our society is advancing into a new era of technology. Technology companies are in a heated race to finish and perfect their products for the market. Many times our society as a whole is moving so fast that we forget to stop, slow down and analyze the progression. Self-driving has the potential to be a very powerful tool that can completely change transportation forever. However, if engineers and designers move too quickly and don’t consider all ethical outcomes and situations that may arise, there will be serious consequences.

In their article 'Autonomous Vehicles Need Experimental Ethics: Are We Ready for Utilitarian Cars?' Bonnefon, Shariff, and Rahwan (2015) argue that the development of Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) comes with a slew of significant moral problems that can benefit from the utilisation of experimental ethics. Bonnefon et al. list the expected benefits that AVs will provide, such as improving traffic efficiency, reducing pollution, and, most importantly, that they are predicted to reduce traffic accidents by up to ninety percent (1). However, the authors point out that, in spite of all the good that will follow from the deployment of AVs, there will be unavoidable