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The Moral Dilemma of Driverless Cars: Save The Driver or Save The Crowd?

Posted by BeauHD on from the right-vs-wrong dept.

HughPickens.com writes: What should a driverless car with one rider do if it is faced with the choice of swerving off the road into a tree or hitting a crowd of 10 pedestrians? The answer depends on whether you are the rider in the car or someone else is, writes Peter Dizikes at MIT News. According to recent research most people prefer autonomous vehicles to minimize casualties in situations of extreme danger -- except for the vehicles they would be riding in. "Most people want to live in in a world where cars will minimize casualties," says Iyad Rahwan. "But everybody wants their own car to protect them at all costs." The result is what the researchers call a "social dilemma," in which people could end up making conditions less safe for everyone by acting in their own self-interest. "If everybody does that, then we would end up in a tragedy whereby the cars will not minimize casualties," says Rahwan. Researchers conducted six surveys, using the online Mechanical Turk public-opinion tool, between June 2015 and November 2015. The results consistently showed that people will take a utilitarian approach to the ethics of autonomous vehicles, one emphasizing the sheer number of lives that could be saved. For instance, 76 percent of respondents believe it is more moral for an autonomous vehicle, should such a circumstance arise, to sacrifice one passenger rather than 10 pedestrians. But the surveys also revealed a lack of enthusiasm for buying or using a driverless car programmed to avoid pedestrians at the expense of its own passengers. "This is a challenge that should be on the mind of carmakers and regulators alike," the researchers write. "For the time being, there seems to be no easy way to design algorithms that would reconcile moral values and personal self-interest."

11 of 364 comments (clear)

  1. Seems this topic is stuck in the roundabout. by Hylandr · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Here we go again. We just had this discussion last week too.

    If the new slashdot owners are using the client base as fodder for some think-tank the least you could do is provide compensation after the first few times an article is recycled.

    --
    ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
    1. Re:Seems this topic is stuck in the roundabout. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      My point is still valid though. False dichotomy. The car should (and pretty much every driver-less car will) use maximum braking power to reduce speed as much as possible. In almost all cases it will do this long before becomes too late to stop without hitting anyone. This gives pedestrians the most time to get out of the way and if it hits them it does so at the lowest possible speed.
      Further, when swerving you run the risk of a pedestrian diving out of the way, in the SAME direction that the car swerves.
      Typically such "oh no I must choose which object hit" scenarios occur when the car is driving recklessly or the driver is inattentive, neither of which should apply to non-hacked self-driving cars.

    2. Re:Seems this topic is stuck in the roundabout. by Hylandr · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Expound on the morality of the issue all you want. The final decision as to whether the outcome was predetermined or premeditated will belong to the jury.

      The real question I want the answer to is who will be on trial? Even then, until there is a sufficient body of judicial precedent I refuse to own, operate or allow to be carted away to my funeral in one.

      --
      ~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
    3. Re:Seems this topic is stuck in the roundabout. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      THIS!

      I think this topic is really representative of the media scaremongering today :

      1 - Take a situation which presents a moral dilema, however rare it may arise in real life even now ... How many times a day does this exact situation REALLY happens in the US for example? I wanna know to check it is not an imaginary problem!
      2 - Ask the wrong questions about the part of the situation that is the closer to a catastrophic failure that it can be, in a way that sound as scary or horrific as possible, to get the answer you are after : What if YOU have to die to save 10 strangers (and one may be the next Stalin anyway)?
      3 - Make sure to blow up the importance of this extreme-odds problem : like millions of people will die everyday ...
      4 - Find a culprit that is different from your readership : migrants, err ... sorry AI, robots! They're commin' for ya!
      5- Conveniently forget that the problem can be even rarer as AI won't be texting, as even if a glitch happens, it could be corrected after that and for all cars on the road! So really, what is the actual frequency now and what would it be with driverless cars?
      6 - Make it a priority : After all, we don't even know if it is a common problem now, if it will be in the future, but this make nice click-bait headlines and as I enjoy driving if I appeal to the luddite feeling/loss of control fear/hero-complex of readers and sway them I will avoid people to take my wheel/gun from me!

      Really, asking questions like : do you want people to die? and do you want to die? Of course, both will be answer by no, then proclaming people don't want driverless cars is just sleazy ...

      Meteorites fall on earth all the time, they can kill people too, where is our anti-meteorite patriot missile system? Quick crawl back to the caves and call your congress critter to do something about this life threatening problem! YOUR life is at stakes! /s

      Show us the numbers, and projections based on cause of these accidents right now, with number of people involved and outcome. Then you can convince me driverless cars are more dangerous than the actual situation now in that particular case ...

    4. Re:Seems this topic is stuck in the roundabout. by catchblue22 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I think something that is usually not emphasized is that in most cases, human drivers will not have time to make such moral decisions. If you had time enough to think about moral implications, you would in most cases have time to avoid the accident in the first place.

      --
      This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when first he appears as a protector - Plato (423 to 327 BC)
    5. Re:Seems this topic is stuck in the roundabout. by localman · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I like how everyone assumes people make carefully considered, rational decisions in a high-speed crisis.

      People probably choose to veer away from hitting people because they don't realize they might kill themselves - they just see what is in front of them and sure to happen, and don't have the time or wherewithall to consider the unknown consequences.

      People will reach out to catch a falling knife, too, but that doesn't mean that they thought about the implications.

    6. Re:Seems this topic is stuck in the roundabout. by dave420 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Your car is filled with airbags and seatbelts and crumple zones and all sorts designed to protect you during a crash. Pedestrians have none of that (at least for the time being). The CAR should protect you (using those safety features), the AI should do what drivers are supposed to do - cause the least amount of carnage on the road.

  2. The moral dilemma of posting dupes by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Informative

    https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...

  3. Crowds of teens will jump into the road as a joke by e1618978 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ... and laugh and run off as the driver's car kills the driver.

  4. Intelligent Steering by SmaryJerry · · Score: 5, Funny

    Self-driving cars will have face recognition, evaluate the net worth of the targets compared to the net worth of the driver and choose who lives accordingly.

  5. I hope the car AI decides... by Nova+Express · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...to run over whoever keeps posting this dupe.

    BOOM! Problem solved!

    --
    Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)

    http://www.lawrenceperson.com/