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Drivers Prefer Autonomous Cars That Don't Kill Them (hothardware.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the crash-testing dept.

"A new study shows that most people prefer that self-driving cars be programmed to save the most people in the event of an accident, even if it kills the driver," reports Information Week. "Unless they are the drivers." Slashdot reader MojoKid quotes an article from Hot Hardware about the new study, which was published by Science magazine. So if there is just one passenger aboard a car, and the lives of 10 pedestrians are at stake, the survey participants were perfectly fine with a self-driving car "killing" its passenger to save many more lives in return. But on the flip side, these same participants said that if they were shopping for a car to purchase or were a passenger, they would prefer to be within a vehicle that would protect their lives by any means necessary. Participants also balked at the notion of the government stepping in to regulate the "morality brain" of self-driving cars.
The article warns about a future where "a harsh AI reality may whittle the worth of our very existence down to simple, unemotional percentages in a computer's brain." MIT's Media Lab is now letting users judge for themselves, in a free online game called "Moral Machine" simulating the difficult decisions that might someday have to be made by an autonomous self-driving car.

5 of 451 comments (clear)

  1. News at 5... by x0ra · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People value their own lives..

    1. Re: News at 5... by bigpat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The premise that people make split second ethical judgements is delusional. What people do is react. And many times they don't react in time to avoid the worst possible outcome.

      And if they survive their brains spend hours, days, weeks and years even going over and over what happened. The brain in trying to learn from what happened adds more processing than was therein the first place.

      Our false recollections. All the things you could have, should have, but didn't have time to think about when really all you had time to do was jerk the wheel and BAM!

      And now a bunch of delusional people are trying to apply some false notion of ethics to decision making that should be as simple as stop the car before hitting something. There isn't enough time to consider other options. There never was enough time. People just think there was because our brains work that way.

    2. Re: News at 5... by anarcobra · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > should be as simple as stop the car before hitting something
      So much this.
      I have a really hard time thinking of any realistic situation where killing you will save 10 people.
      What? Ten people are just standing out in the street and the only other option is to drive off a cliff?
      Fuck them. Why are they in the middle of the road?
      Just hit the brakes and hope for the best.
      Since it's an automatic car it shouldn't be driving fast in a zone with pedestrians anyway, and people shouldn't be walking on highways.

  2. That's normal by rrohbeck · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Save the environment, reduce carbon emissions, save water, reduce debt... unless it affects me financially.

    --
    thegodmovie.com - watch it
  3. Re:It Doesn't Matter; It Won't Ever Happen by Fwipp · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But the car doesn't need to make a psychic "This is the most valuable life" calculation/decision.

    It just uses its regular crash-avoidance behavior (say, hitting the brakes), and maybe somebody dies. The cop on the scene decides that the pedestrian probably shouldn't have been trying to cross the freeway, and everyone else moves on with their lives. The end.