Many have warmed up to Tesla, Google, Apple and others in the U.S., EU
and Japan promoting the idea – and feasibility – of self-driving, even fully
autonomous cars. Meanwhile, little attention has been paid to the fact that
the decisions left by drivers to their cars need to be made by someone,
somehow. Life in the digital age implies some algorithm applying artificial in
lieu of human intelligence and ethics.
One of the greatest anticipated benefits of fully autonomous cars is a
dramatic reduction of
accidents by up
to 90%, assuming that such cars represent a majority of vehicles in
circulation. That should be achievable reasonably soon, since 10
million of them are expected to be on the road by 2020. The elimination of
“pilot error” alone – for example influence of alcohol and drugs, distraction
by smart phones or other devices, and speeding – rationally accounts for such a
forecast. But even fully autonomous cars
will encounter unforeseeable events, and some of those will result in
accidents, including fatal accidents. NHTSA
has started to examine the first fatality involving a
Tesla S, which showed that full
autonomy is the only acceptable solution for self-driving cars under most
circumstances, not least because reaction speed and decisional quality and
predictability can be developed to surpass human capabilities by a considerable
margin.
But making and carrying out decisions does not absolve manufacturers,
drivers, and society at large from the burden of analysis and – sometimes tragic
– choices. How is an “autonomous” car to react when a child suddenly runs
into the traffic lane but the evasive action would hit another pedestrian?
Should the car be programmed to accept death for its passenger(s) if, say, ten
other lives will (or merely can) likely be saved? AI is a matter of coding, but
also of machine learning.
Researchers including Jean-François Bonnefon of
the Toulouse School of Economics, Azim Shariff of U. Oregon’s Culture and Morality Lab, and Iyad Rahwan at MIT’s Scalable Cooperation Group polled
some 2,000 individuals on their views and values on ethical choices in
autonomous vehicles. The participants considered the questions in different
roles and situations, as either noninvolved bystanders or as passengers of the
car. The participants were then asked how they would like to see their own
autonomous car programmed.
A clear majority of participants preferred to minimize the total
number of casualties. 76% chose to sacrifice the driver to save ten other
lives. The scenario pitting one driver against one pedestrian, however,
produced a virtually exact complementary outcome: only 23% approved of
sacrificing the driver. But passengers that were not drivers took fundamentally
different positions.
While utilitarian
ethics may leave questions to be probed, there are also commercial
considerations for the automotive industry: if autonomous cars are programmed
to reflect generally accepted moral principles, or legally ordained ones, fewer
individuals may be prepared to buy them. Another option may be to allow for
“scalable morality” by allowing the buyer or driver to choose to some extent
how selfish or altruistic he wants to set his car’s “ethics thermostat.”
Welcome to machine ethics.
Tort law reaches a new frontier by naming software (or its programmer, i.e., the manufacturer) as a defendant –
with prospects for mass recalls based on the stroke of a judicial pen.
