The Problem With Self Driving Cars: Who Controls the Code? (theguardian.com)

schwit1 writes with Cory Doctorow's story at the Guardian diving into the questions of applied ethics that autonomous cars raise, especially in a world where avoiding accidents or mitigating their dangers may mean breaking traffic laws. From the article: The issue is with the 'Trolley Problem' as applied to autonomous vehicles, which asks, if your car has to choose between a maneuver that kills you and one that kills other people, which one should it be programmed to do? The problem with this formulation of the problem is that it misses the big question that underpins it: if your car was programmed to kill you under normal circumstances, how would the manufacturer stop you from changing its programming so that your car never killed you?

Comments

Re:As someone who doesn't drive anymore...

[Kokuyo]

Now I know how users must feel when I try to explain virtualization. I know most of these words but it is very hard to makse sense out of them.

Re:Of course make it Non-Free Software

[penguinoid]

There's no reason to make the software non-free. It's not like the code will have some SacrificeBusfullOfChildrenToSaveDriver variable that some idiot can change, and even if there were hardly anyone capable of reprogramming the car would be stupid enough to risk their lives on their own untested edits to the program.It would probably be a good idea to have signed software for security purposes, but that's different and compatible with free software.

There is no need to worry about the moral dilemma of choosing who to sacrifice. The answer is simple and obvious to everyone -- pick the driver who never drives drunk, never drives sleepy or otherwise impaired, never gets distracted, has lightning reflexes, always drives carefully, and is less likely to kill everyone. Morally speaking, we want to start using self-driving cars, even if they are worse than the average driver, starting first with replacing arthritic old grandma with failing eyesight*.

* Roughly speaking, the morally correct thing to do is replace any driver who's insurance premiums (aka professional estimate of actual driving ability) are higher than those of a self-driving car.