Of cats and cliffs: the ethical dilemmas of the driverless car

<https://theconversation.com/of-cats-and-cliffs-the-ethical-dilemmas-of-the-driverless-car-49778>

We make decisions every day based on risk – perhaps running across a road to catch a bus if the road is quiet, but not if it’s busy. Sometimes these decisions must be made in an instant, in the face of dire circumstances: a child runs out in front of your car, but there are other dangers to either side, say a cat and a cliff. How do you decide? Do you risk your own safety to protect that of others?

Now that self-driving cars are here and with no quick or sure way of overriding the controls – or even none at all – car manufacturers are faced with an algorithmic ethical dilemma. On-board computers in cars are already parking for us, driving on cruise control, and could take control in safety-critical situations. But that means they will be faced with the difficult choices that sometimes face humans.

How to programme a computer’s ethical calculus?

-Calculate the lowest number of injuries for each possible outcome, and take that route. Every living instance would be treated the same.
-Calculate the lowest number of injuries for children for each possible outcome, and take that route.
-Allocate values of 10 for each human, four for a cat, two for a dog, and one for a horse. Then calculate the total score for each in the impact, and take the route with the lowest score. So a big group of dogs would rank more highly than two cats, and the car would react to save the dogs.

[...]

Then there are the legal issues. What if a car could have intervened to save lives but didn’t? Or if it ran people down deliberately based on its ethical calculus?



Alberto
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