Self-driving cars and Moral Machine

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The Trolley Problem. 

Loved by ones and hated by the others. Questions with no right and wrong answers. Decisions that no one would like to make. What if there is a solution to the trolley problem and our hurting morals in the world of Artificial Intelligence and Self-driving cars.

“Moral Machine”. Creation of students from MIT, who wants you to be god for a few minutes and decide who lives and who dies. This platform is a simulation of a self-driving car seconds before the unavoidable accident.There is also a choice of creating your own design. In every scenario there is someone dying. The question is who and how to decide on that. .

Even though the trolley problem may seem old and not realistic, the driverless car for sure do seems realistic enough. With the technology that we established, we are able to make a car that is going to decide for us on what to do in every situation possible. The biggest advantage of it is that the car is actually able to process the situation and make the best decision, when with people we can not predict anything. But what about the situation when the driverless car is faced with unsolvable problem and need to chose who lives and who dies. How can we overcome those ethical issues that seems to be a no-win situation. Those issue has to be solved so that self-driving cars can enter the market but for now we are facing not only problems of morality but also problems with ethnicity and people’s beliefs. It turns out that people from different countries have different reactions to the situations presented in the “Moral Machine”. For example, someone will save a pedestrian who is crossing the street on a red light and someone else will think of it as an exception to the basic moral rule and not save this person. But when we think about an accident, it is a split second before we hit someone. No-one is thinking about the fact if the person crossing the street on the red light is poor, rich, sick or healthy. It is still human life, no matter what.No one will judge you for intentionally killing a rich person instead of poor one. Unfortunately when it comes to driverless-cars, those decisions are being proceeded differently and we need to face them. The only question is how and who is going to set the rules.

http://moralmachine.mit.edu

 

References:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/14/cars-drivers-ethical-dilemmas-machines

http://moralmachine.mit.edu

https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/Moral-Machine

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07135-0

One thought on “Self-driving cars and Moral Machine

  1. Tautkevychius Yana says:

    Some time ago I have already heard this story, there is a video on youtube from one of the Harvard lectures about this case and a two moral reasons that make people come up with different decisions in, on the first sight, the same situations. Obviously, the self-driving cars have no soul and heart and definitely any kind of moral reasons in such situations as with a trolley car. However, the AI is developing and new technologies emerging so the solution to this case gonna be quickly figure out.

    The link to the video that I mentioned before:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY

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