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Drivers Prefer Autonomous Cars That Don't Kill Them (hothardware.com)
"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.
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.
People value their own lives..
Save the environment, reduce carbon emissions, save water, reduce debt... unless it affects me financially.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
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.
If we could get an AI that can kill for a parking space, I'd be fine with that.
Have gnu, will travel.
These scenarios are just a little bit contrived... I can't fathom any real life scenario where any of these situations would occur with the odds of both options being equal, which is the point where the software would be called upon to exhibit a preference of one option over another.
Exactly. Why don't people discuss the millions of small decisions - "how quickly shall I go through this stop sign?", "should I signal this turn or is it too much hassle?". Those are where the existing human software is causing bad consequences on a daily basis.
No, let's discuss the one in a billion corner case instead.
Self driving cars will transfer the liability from the owner of the car to the manufacturer of the car. This is already happening. Otherwise, they could never sell a car to anyone. But if the liability is held by the manufacturer, you can be sure the crash algorithm will be one that minimizes total casualties (and thus total liability).
And notice that this is the same issue behind the Will Smith film, "I, Robot". Will's character is rescued from drowning by a robot that lets a little girl drown instead. The robot had calculated the chances of saving each and Will won the AI lottery.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Hahaha. It's even simpler than that. Everyone seems to be making the assumption that the cars will be such driving geniuses. That's not going to happen for quite a long while.
0) We all know that stopping in the middle of the highway is dangerous, BUT the way the laws are written in most countries, it's practically always your fault if you drive into the rear of another vehicle especially if it didn't swerve into your path and merely braked suddenly, or worse was stationary for some time.
1) Thus for legal and liability reasons the robot cars will be strictly obeying all convincing posted speed limits (even if they are stupidly slow by some mistake, or by some prankster), and will stick to speeds where they would be able to brake in time to avoid collisions or at least fatal collisions. Whichever is slower.
2) In most danger situations the robot cars will brake and try to come to a stop ASAP all while turning on its hazard lights. Which shouldn't be too difficult at those said speeds.
3) If people die because of tailgating it's the tailgater's fault. Same if the driver behind doesn't stop.
4) There are hardware/software failures then it's some vendors fault.
5) If braking won't avoid the problem even at "tortoise speeds", in most cases fancy moves wouldn't either. In the fringe cases where fancy moves would have helped but braking wouldn't AND it would be the robot car's fault if it braked, the insurance companies would be more than willing to take those bets.
The odds of the car being designed to do fancier moves to save lives are practically zero. If I was designing the car I wouldn't do it - imagine if the car got confused and did some fancy moves to "avoid collision" and killed some little kids. In contrast if it got confused and came to stop ASAP if any little kids are killed it would more likely be someone else's fault.
If you are a human driver/cyclist/motorcyclist you better not tailgate such cars.
Look at the Google car accident history, most of the accidents were due to other drivers. Perhaps I'm wrong but my guess is it's because of "tailgating". Those drivers might still believe the AI car was doing it wrong but the law wouldn't be on their side.