06-19-2017, 07:10 PM
In a sort of related bit, I love the discussions on the morality of driving.
As Google, Uber, Tesla, and many other companies continue to develop self-driving car technology, they're working past the technical problems related to driving and moving more on to the moral and ethical issues. Google said long ago that they really have no choice but to tell their automated cars to follow the speed limit. That's pretty straightforward; there's a whole host of legal problems with programming your cars to move at a "safe speed" rather than following a legally posted speed limit, so they had to go with legally posted speed limits. Even if those don't make much sense.
But you get into a whole next-level issue when you consider morality. Since computers can make complicated decisions instantaneously, and act upon those decisions instantaneously, there is no more human "fudge factor" to be considered when a moral decision has to be made.
Case in point: your self-driving vehicle is moving down a roadway at the posted speed limit of 45 miles per hour. It is approaching an intersection with a concrete barrier on the left side of the road. A child is walking across the crosswalk in front of the vehicle. The car goes to apply the brakes to stop at the intersection and finds that its owner has not properly maintained those brakes, or they were sabotaged, or whatever...the point is, the brakes fail. At the car's current course and speed, it will strike the child crossing the intersection if no course correction takes place.
Traveling inside the car is a family of three - husband, wife, and child. The car must now make a decision.
1) Continue on its current course, striking and likely killing the child crossing the street. Affects one person.
2) Deviate course to the left, causing the car to strike the barrier head-on at 45 mph, possibly killing or severely injuring the family inside (but saving the child crossing the street). Affects three people.
Again, human "fudge factor" isn't an excuse here. You can't later argue in court that the driver "froze up" being unable to make a decision. You have to program the car to decide a course of action here. To make this more complex, what if the child crossing the street isn't a child? What if it's a family? What if it's a government leader? What if the passengers in the car are "important people?"
What if you program the car to always choose to drive into the barrier, thinking that there's only a possibility of death for the passengers while there's a guarantee of death for the pedestrian? What if people later learn/know of this, and take advantage of it to actually murder someone by jumping out in front of their self-driving car?
I can't answer these questions definitively. But I love thinking about them.
As Google, Uber, Tesla, and many other companies continue to develop self-driving car technology, they're working past the technical problems related to driving and moving more on to the moral and ethical issues. Google said long ago that they really have no choice but to tell their automated cars to follow the speed limit. That's pretty straightforward; there's a whole host of legal problems with programming your cars to move at a "safe speed" rather than following a legally posted speed limit, so they had to go with legally posted speed limits. Even if those don't make much sense.
But you get into a whole next-level issue when you consider morality. Since computers can make complicated decisions instantaneously, and act upon those decisions instantaneously, there is no more human "fudge factor" to be considered when a moral decision has to be made.
Case in point: your self-driving vehicle is moving down a roadway at the posted speed limit of 45 miles per hour. It is approaching an intersection with a concrete barrier on the left side of the road. A child is walking across the crosswalk in front of the vehicle. The car goes to apply the brakes to stop at the intersection and finds that its owner has not properly maintained those brakes, or they were sabotaged, or whatever...the point is, the brakes fail. At the car's current course and speed, it will strike the child crossing the intersection if no course correction takes place.
Traveling inside the car is a family of three - husband, wife, and child. The car must now make a decision.
1) Continue on its current course, striking and likely killing the child crossing the street. Affects one person.
2) Deviate course to the left, causing the car to strike the barrier head-on at 45 mph, possibly killing or severely injuring the family inside (but saving the child crossing the street). Affects three people.
Again, human "fudge factor" isn't an excuse here. You can't later argue in court that the driver "froze up" being unable to make a decision. You have to program the car to decide a course of action here. To make this more complex, what if the child crossing the street isn't a child? What if it's a family? What if it's a government leader? What if the passengers in the car are "important people?"
What if you program the car to always choose to drive into the barrier, thinking that there's only a possibility of death for the passengers while there's a guarantee of death for the pedestrian? What if people later learn/know of this, and take advantage of it to actually murder someone by jumping out in front of their self-driving car?
I can't answer these questions definitively. But I love thinking about them.
Quote:Considering the mods here are generally liberals who seem to have a soft spot for fascism and white supremacy (despite them saying otherwise), me being perma-banned at some point is probably not out of the question.