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Autonomous Car Ethics: If a Crash Is Unavoidable, What Does It Hit?
An anonymous reader writes "Patrick Lin of California Polytechnic State University explores one of the ethical problems autonomous car developers are going to have to solve: crash prioritization. He posits this scenario: suppose an autonomous car determines a crash is unavoidable, but has the option of swerving right into a small car with few safety features or swerving left into a heavier car that's more structurally sound. Do the people programming the car have it intentionally crash into the vehicle less likely to crumple? It might make more sense, and lead to fewer fatalities — but it sure wouldn't feel that way to the people in the car that got hit. He says, '[W]hile human drivers may be forgiven for making a poor split-second reaction – for instance, crashing into a Pinto that's prone to explode, instead of a more stable object – robot cars won't enjoy that freedom. Programmers have all the time in the world to get it right. It's the difference between premeditated murder and involuntary manslaughter.' We could somewhat randomize outcomes, but that would lead to generate just as much trouble. Lin adds, 'The larger challenge, though, isn't thinking through ethical dilemmas. It's also about setting accurate expectations with users and the general public who might find themselves surprised in bad ways by autonomous cars. Whatever answer to an ethical dilemma the car industry might lean towards will not be satisfying to everyone.'"
Slam the brakes on and don't swerve either way. It's by no means optimal, but as far as lawsuits are concerned, it's much easier to defend "the car simply tried to stop as soon as possible" than "the car chose to hit you because it didn't want to hit someone else".
Let's be honest. The job of YOUR car is to keep YOU safe, so the smaller car is probably the better bet as it will have less inertia and cause you less harm. Sure, the most important law of robotics is to protect human life... but if it's going to prioritize, it should probably start with its owner.
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
The kids are playing on a fucking railtrack, for fuck's sake. If they can't get out of the way in time, then they deserve what they get.
But what if the driver of the other car, that will survive by steering your car over the cliff, would become the father of the next Hitler?
A car will never have enough data to make a "right" descision in such a situation. Even the example from the intro is an invalid one as for a morally sound descision, you'd need to know how many passengers (and perhaps even WHICH passengers) are in those cars. Family of 5? Single guy with cancer anyway? And such an alogorith would mean assigning an individual (monetary or any dimensionless number - no difference) value to a human life. And then you've left the field of ethical behaviour quite a while ago.
Live with imperfect descissions, as you never will be able to make the perfect one. So just stick to the usual heuristics: If you can't avoid both obstacles, Avoid the one that's closer. even if you hit the other one, you'll have a split second longer to brake. THAT might make the differnce between life and death.
bickerdyke
Congratulations, you've given me a great go-to example of a non-answer.
Just leave that kind of behavior undefined.
Programs are generally deterministic beasts, by nature. What are you trying to say?
Why not? The simplest method is to choose the collision with the lowest speed differential. In fact, this whole post is pointless. The self-driving car doesn't need to choose based on abstract concepts--choose the collision with the lowest speed differential. Lower speed differential means less energy transferred in the impact means less damage and less injuries. Moreover this is trivial for the cars to determine at this stage already. They can already calculate relative speeds between themselves and other objects, so if not all of the objects can be avoided, the choice is obvious.
While a complex guidance system may be designed from the top down with such sorts of questions raised, a crashing vehicle is always a deadly weapon. Effort in reducing the risk of the accident, itself, by improving brakes, sensors, headlight effectiveness, and crash resistance of the vehicle itself is likely to be far more efficient and reliable than complex advance modeling or moral quandaries. The sophistication needed to evaluate the secondary effects of a crash is far, far beyond the capabilities of what must be a very reliable, extremely robust guidance system. Expanding its sophistication is likely to introduce far more _bugs_ into the system.
This is a case where "Keep It Simple, Stupid" is vital. Reduce speed in a controlled fashion: Avoid pedestrians, if they can be detected, because they have no armor. Get off the road in a controlled fashion.
So you would have it choose to mow down the stationary infant in its stroller as opposed to tapping a parking pickup truck backing up at at 10 MPH?
The problem with his original question is that he assumes the self-driving car has knowledge of the type, mass, and vulnerability of things around it. This might be the test case for the three laws of robotics - do not ever choose to hit an unprotected human (probably includes motorcyclists, bicyclists, and pedestrians). If you know (by a beacon or whatever) that a vehicle is completely autonomous and does not contain humans and has comparable delta-V, give that preference. If hitting a vehicle likely containing a human is inevitable, choose the lowest speed impact.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.