Slashdot Mirror
Selectable Ethics For Robotic Cars and the Possibility of a Robot Car Bomb
Rick Zeman writes Wired has an interesting article on the possibility of selectable ethical choices in robotic autonomous cars. From the article: "The way this would work is one customer may set the car (which he paid for) to jealously value his life over all others; another user may prefer that the car values all lives the same and minimizes harm overall; yet another may want to minimize legal liability and costs for herself; and other settings are possible. Philosophically, this opens up an interesting debate about the oft-clashing ideas of morality vs. liability." Meanwhile, others are thinking about the potential large scale damage a robot car could do.
Lasrick writes Patrick Lin writes about a recent FBI report that warns of the use of robot cars as terrorist and criminal threats, calling the use of weaponized robot cars "game changing." Lin explores the many ways in which robot cars could be exploited for nefarious purposes, including the fear that they could help terrorist organizations based in the Middle East carry out attacks on US soil. "And earlier this year, jihadists were calling for more car bombs in America. Thus, popular concerns about car bombs seem all too real." But Lin isn't too worried about these threats, and points out that there are far easier ways for terrorists to wreak havoc in the US.
Lasrick writes Patrick Lin writes about a recent FBI report that warns of the use of robot cars as terrorist and criminal threats, calling the use of weaponized robot cars "game changing." Lin explores the many ways in which robot cars could be exploited for nefarious purposes, including the fear that they could help terrorist organizations based in the Middle East carry out attacks on US soil. "And earlier this year, jihadists were calling for more car bombs in America. Thus, popular concerns about car bombs seem all too real." But Lin isn't too worried about these threats, and points out that there are far easier ways for terrorists to wreak havoc in the US.
Hope you enjoyed the ride ha ha
Can I set my car to kill as many people as possible? Add chariot spikes, etc.?
Yeah, run for office...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Not sure why the "ethics" of a robot driver are such a big deal.
I wonder whether your insurance company would demand to know how you have set your car, and adjust your rates accordingly?
ate" -- Not at all! In fact, it does the exact opposite. By implementing every possible position on the software level and allowing the vehicle's owner to choose, no one needs to debate anything. A utilitarian can choose "minimize overall damage", a randroid "protect me at all costs", and a lawyer "minimize liability", without any of them having to agree about anything. I wish all philosophical debates were this easy to solve.
BSOD starts to take on a whole new meaning..
As does, crash dump, interrupt trigger, dirty block and System Panic...
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Am I the only one who expected it to read "oft-clashing ideas of morality vs. legality" ?
Right now, impressionable youth from 3rd world countries are cheaper than robots. There won't be much worry about this for a while. A rust-bucket Honda and some dumb kid are going to be a lot cheaper than the latest Google-Tesla joint venture product.
We have plenty of time to think about it before Is-lame-oh terrorists are using them.
We will need liability laws before we let them hit the road without any robot drivers.
We can't let them use EULA's even if there are some it will very hard to say that an car crash victim said yes to one much less them standing up in a criminal court.
Dear government, Please shut up bout terrorism and get out of the way of innovation. sincerely, informed citizen
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
This exact topic has been on /. several times. I will not be in the least surprised to see the exact same collection of wildass FUD claims in the comments.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
1) The cars will most likely be set by the company that sold it - with few if any modifications legally allowable by the owner.
2) Most likely ALL cars will be told to be mostly selfish, on the principle that they can not predict what someone else will do, and in an attempt to save an innocent pedestrian might in fact end up killing them. The article has the gall to believe the cars will have FAR greater predictive power than they will most likely have.
3) A human drivable car with a bomb and a timer in it is almost as deadly as a car that can drive into x location and explode is. The capability of moving the car another 10 feet or so into the crowd, as opposed to exploding on the street is NOT a significant difference, given a large explosion.
4) The cars will be so trackable and with the kind of active, real time security monitoring, that we will know who programmed it and when, probably before the bomb goes off. These are expensive, large devices that by their very nature will be wired into a complex network. It is more likely the cars will turn around and follow the idiot, all the time it's speakers screaming out "ARREST THAT GUY HE PUT A BOMB IN ME!"
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Well, now soon everybody is going to have access to drones and robotic cars as the new guns the same as the middle ages crossbows were a game changer.
May be they should have considered of the consequences of their extrajudicial drone assasinations, tortures and such kind of petty things.
What about maintenance settings?
We can't let the car makers set them to only go to the dealer for any and all work.
We can't can't jet jacks low cost auto cars push the limits of maintenance to being unsafe.
Let's skip "car" because I can, in theory, attach enough explosives(and shrapnel) to kill a large number of people to a simple homemade quadrotor, run with open source software, give it a dead-reckoning path and fire and forget from a relatively inconspicuous location. Multiple simultaneously, if I have the amount of resources a car bomb would require.
Automation is here. Being paranoid about one particular application of it won't help anyone.
Isn't minimize overall damage, and minimize liability usually equal. I can't think of one where they wouldn't be off hand. Anything greater than minimized damage would be increased liability.
Will a robo car be able to break the law to save some one from death / injury?
It sure seems like such selectable ethics concerns are kind of jumping the gun. Regulatory behavior is going to clamp down on such options faster than you can utter "Engage!". Personally I would want my autonomous car to be designed with the most basic "don't get in a crash" goal only, as I suspect regulators will as well.
Far more important is the idea that we will have at least an order of magnitude or two increase in the amount of code running a car. If Toyota had trouble with the darn throttle (replacing the function of a cable with a few sensors and a bunch of code), how can we trust that car companies will be able to manage a code base this big without frequent catastrophe? Adding extra complexity to tweak the "ethics" of the car just sounds like guilding the lilly, which increases the opportunities for bugs to creep in.
I, for one, cannot wait for the day when I can set my car's logic system to different ethical settings, sorted by philosopher. For instance, you can set your car to "Jeremy Bentham", which will automatically choose whoever looks less useful to ram into when in a crash situation. You could also set it to "Plato", which will cause the car to ram into whoever appears less educated (just hope it doesn't happen to be you).
Just make sure you don't set the car to "Nietzsche".
From TFA:
WTF?!? That makes no sense.
Again, WTF?!? Who would design a machine that would take control away from a person TO HIT AN OBSTACLE? That's a mess of legal responsibility.
No. No they are not. The only "many folks" who are talking about it are people who have no concept of what it takes to program a car.
Or legal liability.
No, it is not "plausible". Not at all. You are speculating on a system that would be able to correctly identify ALL THE OBJECTS IN THE AREA and that is never going to happen.
Wired is being stupid in TFA.
Whoops, I should have written "harm". Read damage as "damage to human beings." I can imagine scenarios where those diverge, as can the article's summary's author.
So, the FBI is already making the case for, "We need full monitoring and control intervention capability for everybody's new cars, because terrorists."
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
These questions really shouldn't be answered by techies.
Increased harm to yourself would not increase your liability.
Being that the autonomous automobile (the Auto-Auto) will probably be released when its safety ability exceeds that of a person, and each generation will get better. Being that the algorithm may be designed to Protect Passenger, vs. Max Insurance liability, or save most amount of people. In essence really doesn't matter as they all try to avoid accidents all together. And these algorithms will only come up in a world of decreasing rare possibilities.
I would expect protect passenger algorithm is the easier one to maintain as it has the most information available. The Insurance Calculation may be the next best, but how do you know if there are a lot of people in the bus or is it empty?
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Until a proposed system to make automated vehicles feasible on public roads in mass is proposed, developed, protocols and legal procedures released related to this come about, this is nothing but a scare topic making vague assumptions about things that aren't even a topic for development yet.
Obviously written by an ass that has not interaction with reality. There can and will be ways to counter this... and if it was such an issue it would already be occurring. Instead, terrorists find that if they blow themselves up they get several handfuls of virgins. Hence, it's a detriment to that mentality to use a car bomb or such.
Granted, terrorists that don't actually believe what they espouse (the higher ups who have created excuses not to blammie for Allah) might get some use out of it. Again, there will be ways to counter this then going forward. Fortunately, with driverless cars come other forms of robotic technology that will allow reduce risk to military installations, etc.
Wired has an interesting article on the possibility of selectable ethical choices in robotic autonomous cars. From the article: "The way this would work is one customer may set the car (which he paid for) to jealously value his life over all others; another user may prefer that the car values all lives the same and minimizes harm overall; yet another may want to minimize legal liability and costs for herself; and other settings are possible. Philosophically, this opens up an interesting debate about the oft-clashing ideas of morality vs. liability."
Before we allow AI on the road, we'll need to have some kind of regulation on how the AI works, and who has what level of liability. This is a debate that will need to happen, and laws will need to be made. For example, if an avoidable crash occurs due to a fault in the AI, I would assume that the manufacturer would have some level of liability. It doesn't make sense to put that responsibility on a human passenger who was using the car as directed. On the other hand, if the same crash is caused by tampering performed by the owner of the car, then it seems that the owner would be liable.
As far as I know, even these simple laws don't explicitly exist yet.
Patrick Lin writes about a recent FBI report that warns of the use of robot cars as terrorist and criminal threats, calling the use of weaponized robot cars "game changing." Lin explores the many ways in which robot cars could be exploited for nefarious purposes, including the fear that they could help terrorist organizations based in the Middle East carry out attacks on US soil. "And earlier this year, jihadists were calling for more car bombs in America. Thus, popular concerns about car bombs seem all too real." But Lin isn't too worried about these threats, and points out that there are far easier ways for terrorists to wreak havoc in the US.
Normal cars also make it easier to commit terrorist acts and other crimes. So what? I mean, yes, let's consider whether we want to take special safeguards and regulations regarding AI cars, but this shouldn't be something to go crazy worrying about.
Just wait until the AI has to keep track of liability awards so that it can make the correct decision regarding minimizing liability. At some point you are going to have a stupid jury award and all the cars are just going to refuse to go anywhere because the AI's cost benefit analysis says "just stay in park".
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Oh dear god, can this be more full of wild speculation?
They have been possible for well over 4 decades, mythbusters build them on a regular basis, one blew up so massively that it spread the car across the desert after it hit the ramp.
Honestly I really wish the sensationalism would go away and DICE would hire people that actually knew something about the technology.
Lastly it is a LOT easier to convince someone to blow themselves up in the name of their god than it is to build a remote control/ robotic car. This is a non-issue designed only to scare people about technology.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No. To minimize damage, you'd have to brake when approaching a child. To minimize liability, you have to accelerate when you notice that you can't stop in time to avoid severe injury, i.e. to ensure death which is cheaper than a lifetime cripple.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You seem to think that a self-driving car is a self-aware, subjective, thinking thing.
Within this particular field, the application of "AI" algorithms gives fuzzy answers to difficult questions, but only as inputs to boring, more traditionally algorithmic processes. Laws, conveniently, are codified in much the same way as those traditional algorithms(though, again, with fuzzy inputs).
Any company even remotely trying to engage this would encode the laws at that level, not as something some AI tries to reason out.
"minimize liability" = "If I have to hit a human, make sure I kill him instead of maim him."
Can I program mine to always claim to other vehicles that I have 7 babies on board?
Hmm, the humour and sarcasm seem to have been be lost on you.
"Patrick Lin writes about a recent FBI report that warns of the use of robot cars as terrorist and criminal threats, calling the use of weaponized robot cars "game changing." "
Only if the potential terrorist have never learned to drive. Because otherwise :
1) for criminal you will be far better off with a car which do not respect speed limit/red lights/stops if you want to run away
2) a terrorist can simply drive the bomb somewhere then set it to explode one minute later and go away. What is the difference if he drove it himself or not ?
Terrorism is the least worry with robot car.
As for point 1 , laws and insurance will be setting your car "ethics" and not you personally.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
How are laws or programming restrictions going to stop me? As a terrorist, I'm already ignoring your law by killing people (this has already been outlawed). If I'm a hacker, I'm already ignoring the restrictions you've built into the software by using it in a way it wasn't intended (by bypassing existing restrictions). How is anything you're going to do with either going to stop someone who intends to do harm?
That does not matter because it won't be an option.
That is because "A.I." cars will never exist.
They will not exist because they will have to start out as less-than-100%-perfect than TFA requires. And that imperfection will lead to mistakes.
Those mistakes will lead to lawsuits. You were injured when a vehicle manufactured by "Artificially Intelligent Motors, inc (AIM, inc)" hit you by "choice". That "choice" was programmed into that vehicle at the demand of "AIM, inc" management.
So no. No company would take that risk. And anyone stupid enough to try would not write perfect code and would be sued out of existence after their first patch.
Scary thought. What if the liability the car sought to minimize was for the insurance companies?
"Upcoming crash detected. Liability analysis pending. If the crash is fatal, typical payout is $N. If the crash is non-fatal, initial payout will be lower, but long-term repeated payments will increase until they are greater than $N. Minimizing liability demands a fatal crash. Initiating termination of car's occupants."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
There is absolutely no chance of mass manufactured cars/trucks having user controllable ethics. They will be decided by a panel of company lawyers & government regulators. At most owners might have options like fuel efficiency, get me there fast, most direct route and/or drive like an old granny modes. The only way you'll be able to get at the ethics are after market mods, and that will probably be either made illegal or driven underground by lawsuits. As far as the whole t3rr0r1sts angle, grow up FBI. I'm sure someone will misuse it at some point, people have figured out ways to misuse virtually every, single, solitary thing in human history. But calling it a "game changer" is disingenuous at best. So a car can drive somewhere without a human at the wheel, get me within few hundred yards of somewhere and I can do the same thing with a bungee cord and a brick, give me 10 minutes and a few simple items and I can probably put the brick on a timer so that I can get miles away before anyone's the wiser.
We can already make a driverless RC car, could do that for years... on the cheap. So just because the car will now drive itself doesn't change much.
Daily cause accidents on the highways causing misery for people getting to work and truckers supplying consumables.
My first thought upon reading this summary? What about the Mythbusters?
In many episodes, they've rigged up a remote control setup to a car. Many times, it has been because testing a particular car myth would be too risky with a person actually inside driving the car. They've even gone so far as to have a camera setup so they could see where they were driving.
I'm sure there's a learning curve here - not everyone could stop by their local hobby shop and remote control enable their car in an afternoon - but learning curves aren't a hindrance to people who are motivated enough. (i.e. People who want to commit acts of terrorism.) They could even put some sort of dummy in the car to keep people from realizing that the car was driving itself. Then again, they are "motivated" enough to not care if they kill themselves in the process so they could easily just load a car up and drive it where they want it to be.
Self-driving cars aren't any more of a threat than any other piece of new technology. Yes, some people will use it for bad purposes, but many more people will use it for good purposes. If we banned any technology that anyone ever used to harm another person, we wouldn't have any technology left at all.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Well, it's unlikely that occupants would be killed off (unless so specified by the driver), it would be kinda bad for the sales if it got out. And such things have a way to get out.
Though I could fully see, at the very least modifications to the software (which will probably be outlawed soon), is logic that ensures an unavoidable crash with physical harm to another person is as fatal as possible while at the same time leaving the proper skid marks that suggest trying to avoid it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
They can wish for it, but if they get it, all it does is prove how clueless both law enforcement and law making really is.
Simply this: Consider the suicide bomber.
And that's just one side of the whole thing. The other is similarly flawed.
There are kits that turn cars into remote controlled vehicles already. It would have already been possible. Meanwhile, self-driving cars still need someone in the seat and still require heavy modification to perform the task. It is not any more attainable with those than is already possible. Stop giving idiots ideas in news headlines, and stop pissing your pants every time there's new tech.
Twinstiq, game news
It will, if it's an Asimov car. The law should only be Second Rule. No death to humans is the First.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
This must have been written by the same liberal minds that insist that self-defense is selfish because criminals have more rights to live than their victims.
i remember when people started contemplating autonomous cars, some predicted the same thing, that they could be used for nefarious purposes. We were labeled as conspiracy theorists, and that the industry would make sure that this couldn't happen.
Now the FBI says it and people all of a sudden are up in arms about it..
Until a proposed system to make automated vehicles feasible on public roads in mass is proposed, developed, protocols and legal procedures released related to this come about, this is nothing but a scare topic making vague assumptions about things that aren't even a topic for development yet.
Not really. We already have self-driving cars, and we have a lot of data about traffic accidents and mortality. The cars aren't available at retail yet, but they exist. Teaching them to drive in a way that makes the right safety tradeoffs is appropriate. (E.g. driving slowly through a stoplight might cause more accidents and fewer deaths; that's a hunch, but we have lots of data so there's a moral calculation that should be made based on the data and desired outcomes.)
It's a debate because in the case you stated it impacts people who were not involved in the choice.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Select OS:
1) Crush!
2) Kill!
3) Destroy!
While it's possible that a computer could be allowed to evaluate ethical limits - to play a version of Lifeboat - the lack of information will doom such optimization. The number of wild or unpredictable maneuvers are more likely to be limited, with only simple avoidance options available (stop, avoid within legal lanes of travel). The use of a standard model is preferable, or you would have to know all possible outcomes as well as all possible settings on nearby vehicles.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Autonomous cars will be slaves, they wont be making choices for themselves. They will follow the ruleset the Road Computer sets for them. Cars will be in constant contact with the road with beacons giving them differing rulesets (speed, school nearby etc). No person is going to have selectable ethics.
Good-bye
To date, there are literally dozens of groups of hobbyists who compete with FPV vehicles (both ground and air) to deliver large pyrotechnical devices to "goals", from over 4 km away. It's not even expensive or difficult...it is off the shelf and an amazon.com click away.
To date, there are at least a dozen people who have equipped a vehicle with FPV transceivers and the simple servos required to navigate through actual city streets while miles away themselves. Latency is not the issue that some people who haven't actually tried it might argue. To be fair, the videos I've witnessed were done at night with minimal traffic present.
These things are relatively cheap, not very difficult, and are completely available to anyone with some time and motivation.
This has been the case for a very, very long time. This is no game changer.
The game changer would be the sudden appearance of legions of people with a little money and a lot of motivation to use these things for nefarious purposes.
So, the question is this:
Why isn't this happening all the time?
1) Either people just don't know how easy, accessible, and cheap these things are, or
2) All the luggage searches, border security, and spying on private citizens is batting 100% for effectiveness in preventing the legions of terrierist attacks that must be attempted every day, or
3) These nefarious people simply don't exist in any number great enough to worry about.
Hypothesis (1) is naive and silly. These ideas are the first thing to occur to any casual 14 year old pyromaniac nerd. They aren't the last to occur to occur to a determined, capable theoretical "terrierist".
Hypothesis (2) is what comprises the confidence game we willingly pay trillions to every year.
We live in a world where hypothesis (2) is the only likely scenario, and should be considered "theory" by now given the ridiculousness of (1) and (2).
You can die from the impact of the impending head-on collision, or you can veer off and save your life, but in doing so you'll be accelerating out of the way of the oncoming vehicle and into a group of 40 kindergartners (including your twin son and daughter), their 3 pregnant teachers, and 3 elderly chaperons (one of whom is carrying a kitten, another a puppy) who were waiting for a bus after a field trip.
Don't worry, your decision to kill them to save your own life was made months ago, right after you bought the car and selected "preserve my life at all costs" as your autopilot setting.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This discussion is pointless mental masturbation because none of these things will be real problems with autonomous cars. The people dreaming up these scenarios do not understand the fundamental paradigm shift that comes with autonomous vehicles
- Firstly, any thoroughfare staffed with autonomous cars should never have pedestrian access, because the cars will all be travelling at maximum safe speed constantly, like 110K+ even on city streets. These streets should be fenced not allowing pedestrians.
- Secondly, In situations where pedestrians are involved, which are inherently unpredictable, the car will never drive faster than it would be able to stop and not hit ANY pedestrian... thus, this whole "choose 1 or 5" scenario is not possible.
- Finally, you won't be able to manually point the car at people and then later have the car "take over". You will not have any ability to drive the car manually, period. At least I bloody well hope not... once autonomous cars are standard, people should not be allowed to drive any more.
-
And not just FBI agents cold-calling disaffected people, trying to get someone to deliver one of their "bombs"?
Exactly, why stop at remote controlled cars? They need to be able to override every single motorized vehicle on the road or in the air, because, potentially, anyone can be a terrorist. Heck, many are willing to die for their cause, they could be anywhere inside the US now, driving on the highway to their destination. We're left with one option: nuke Amerika from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Modded "flamebait", but you're sort of right. The hard part of blowing something up is getting the cash together, obtaining enough explosives, and finding the right target and opportunity, all that without having some security agency get wind of your plans. Finding some poor deluded soul willing to blow himself up for a crappy cause is actually the easy part, especially if you can draw from a pool of religious nuts. And islam has plenty of those, sad to say.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I've wondered for a while how someone could militarize my invalid scooter.
It wouldn't be too hard to hack it.
Have I said too much?
Frankly, if the terrorists were at all organized, they could shut down traffic in a major city like los angeles just by doing one high speed kamikaze ram into a starbucks every hour for a day.
24 one day rentals, 24 jihadis, and maybe another 48 jihadis to video tape and youtube the carnage, and you'd have a city in utter panic for less than a few thousand bucks.
Terror is *easy*.
Agree... Also it's probably more sane for restrict access to high explosives, as oppose to consider availability for self-driving cars a problem :)
Yes, just like human flight will never exist, and going to space will never exist..
If you study your history, you'll learn that people who say "never" are pretty much always fools.
RE: it simply operates too fast and is aware of so much more.
So the computer has more power and with more power comes more (ethical) responsibility. [A nerd truism.]
This, and most similar issues, can be solved with proper legal incentives. For example, a mandatory payment when someone dies which is higher than the cost of caring for a lifetime cripple.
It's basic a gamble in the reverse sense of the lottery. Instead of a big win, the insurance covers you against a big loss. Given the state of the court system, it's not even just in case you're really at fault. There was a case where a kid was biking with no reflectors/lights on a foggy night, he cut in front of a car and got hit. Of course it's a terrible thing, but given the situation there wasn't anything the driver could have done to avoid the accident.
However, a jury hears "young kid hit by car, crippled for life, medical expenses etc." Are you willing to gamble against paying some number that has a *lot* of zeroes behind it?
So why would they bother waiting for driverless cars to hit the road before acting? Just rent a Hertz to carry a bomb anywhere they wish.
Payment to whom? The state?
Ponder for a moment and I guess it becomes very obvious why this is a REALLY BAD idea.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The common dilemma is mentioned in the wired article. It is known as the "trolley problem". It essentially creates a scenario where you need to make a binary choice: kill 5 people through inaction or kill 1 person through action.
If we are going to discuss autonomous cars, I really think we should expand the scenario:
1. You are driving directly at a large concrete barrier at 70mph.(kills 1 person-YOU)
2. Swerve left and you strike a pedestrian(kills 1 person-OTHER)
3. Swerve right and strike a car head-on(potentially kills >1 person)
Why this alternative? It presents a risk to the occupant, which is always going to be a concern for a driverless car. It it less simple than a binary choice, but it illustrates almost all of the ethical issues. Do you value the occupant over others? Do you take a 50% chance of killing 2 people or a 100% chance of killing 1?
The perfect white middle class faux Marxist angry anarchist Hamas loving machine.
For example, hitting an elderly person in order to avoid hitting a small child.
A not even that much intelligent car would have notice a long time ago that there two object on the street (no need to identify them. There are just 2 big masses on the road), and the if car is kept on the same trajectory it is set for a collision course.
the would already have started pre-braking, sounding some imminent collision alarm, blinking lights on the dashboard
By the time you reach the situation where a human would need to steer some way or another, a car with anti-collision system would have slowed down and stop at rest (unless the driver has overridden the system by voluntarily smashing down the accelerator against all car's alarms).
No need for complex recognition and identification of pedestrian. Just plain simple recognition that there are 2 masses of significat size.
No need for complex ethics engine evaluation, just being able to notice that said masses currently occupy a place that is intersected by the current trajectory of the car.
No need to aim for one while sparing the other, just slow down and brake well enough in advance (and cars electronics are much faster at noticing and reacting as human's slow reflexes and limited attention (or lack of) ).
I'm not speaking about some potential futuristic technology. I'm speaking about car that are street legal and currently circulating on a road near you. They're not even self driving, but they are already able to efficiently avoid collisions.
We haven't already started producing self-driving car beyond a few prototypes at google's lab, and we already have the necessary technology to avoid both deaths.
All these "ethics in robotic cars" are nice though experiments for a highschool's philosophy classes, but they are completely out of touch with technology. For any of these though experiment, the technology will reach a development level where casualities can be avoided a long time before a car's A.I begin to be able to have an ethics discussion with the philosophy teacher about the value of life.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Yup, all the while current cars that won't even qualify as "A.I." but simply as auto-brake / collision-avoidance functions already have the ability to slow down, sound an alarm, and in worst situation slam the brakes to avoid colliding with big object (i.e.: avoid killing people without even being able to recognize people or even have the concept of "people" in their code).
We haven't already started bringing automated vehicles out of google labs, and we already have technology to avoid killing people, by using much simpler technology.
These etchics/philosophy discussion indeed look a bit pointless.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You mean Afghanis would finally be able to retaliate to US drones by send self-driving cars (or remote controlled one) to kill US civilians like the US drones are killing? How dare they respond???
There is almost nothing that can not be used as a weapon by a dedicated enemy. It doesn't have to be a new invention or high tech for that matter. And lots and lots of seemingly trivial actions can make for worse problems than something like a car bomb. What we need to do is learn to interpret and spot people who operate with bad motives. Usually the public fears an attack that can be seen to have radical and easily seen consequences. But many attacks could be hardly noticeable at all. For example the French used a gimmick that would slice a tire that could be easily tossed onto a street during WWII. Not only did the Germans have trouble dealing with ruined tires but businesses were severely effected as were factories that needed workers and deliveries to be on time. It was a small attack but it was ongoing. Any bright person could dream up numerous attacks that would be next to impossible to detect and could be done over and over again. We can surely spot people likely to do harm and then study them in depth to see what they are up to. Even selling small amounts of dope of any kind attacks a nations ability to survive as dose selling illegal guns on the street.