Should A Driverless Car Hit A Pedestrian To Save Rider's Life?

    • NYT NEWS SERVICE
    • Publish Date: Jun 28 2016 10:38AM
    • |
    • Updated Date: Aug 10 2016 8:01PM
Should A Driverless Car Hit A Pedestrian To Save Rider's Life?

People say one day , perhaps in the not-so distant future, they'd like to be passen gers in self-driving cars that are mindful machines doing their best for the common good. A new research study , however, indicates that what people really want to ride in is an autonomous vehicle (AV) that puts its passengers first. If its machine brain has to choose between slamming into a wall or running someone over, well, sorry , pedestrian.

In this week's `Science' magazine, a group of computer scientists and psychologists explain how they conducted six online surveys last year that asked US residents how they believed AVs should behave. Through a series of quizzes that present unpalatable options amounting to saving or sacrificing yourself -and fellow passengers who may be family members -to spare others, the researchers, not surprisingly , found that people would rather stay alive.  

This particular dilemma of robotic morality has long been chewed on in science fiction books and movies. But in recent years it has become a serious question for researchers working on AVs who must, in essence, program moral decisions into a machine. 

“Is it acceptable for an AV to avoid a motorcycle by swerving into a wall, considering that the probability of survival is greater for the AV's passenger, than for the rider of the motorcycle? 

Should AVs take the ages of the passengers and pedestrians into account?“ wrote Jean-François Bonnefon, of Toulouse School of Economics in France; Azim Shariff, of the University of Oregon; and Iyad Rahwan, of the Media Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . 

At the heart of this discussion is the “trolley problem“. Imagine a runaway trolley barreling toward five workmen on the tracks.Their lives can be saved by a lever that would switch the trolley to another line. But there is one worker on those tracks. What is the correct thing to do? The new research could take AV manufacturers down a philosophical and legal rabbit hole. For example, the authors write, “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?“ NYT NEWS SERVICE

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