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In a Crash, Should Self-Driving Cars Save Passengers or Pedestrians? 2 Million People Weigh In (pbs.org)

Posted by msmash on from the what-humanity-wants dept.

In what is referred to as the "Moral Machine Experiment", a survey of more than two million people from nearly every country on the planet, people preferred to save humans over animals, young over old, and more people over fewer. From a report: Since 2016, scientists have posed this scenario to folks around the world through the "Moral Machine," an online platform hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that gauges how humans respond to ethical decisions made by artificial intelligence. On Wednesday, the team behind the Moral Machine released responses from more than two million people spanning 233 countries, dependencies and territories. They found a few universal decisions -- for instance, respondents preferred to save a person over an animal, and young people over older people -- but other responses differed by regional cultures and economic status.

The study's findings offer clues on how to ethically program driverless vehicles based on regional preferences, but the study also highlights underlying diversity issues in the tech industry -- namely that it leaves out voices in the developing world. The Moral Machine uses a quiz to give participants randomly generated sets of 13 questions. Each scenario has two choices: You save the car's passengers or you save the pedestrians. However, the characteristics of the passengers and pedestrians varied randomly -- including by gender, age, social status and physical fitness. What they found: The researchers identified three relatively universal preferences. On average, people wanted: to spare human lives over animals, save more lives over fewer, prioritize young people over old ones. When respondents' preferences did differ, they were highly correlated to cultural and economic differences between countries. For instance, people who were more tolerant of illegal jaywalking tended to be from countries with weaker governance, nations who had a large cultural distance from the U.S. and places that do not value individualism as highly. These distinct cultural preferences could dictate whether a jaywalking pedestrian deserves the same protection as pedestrians crossing the road legally in the event they're hit by a self-driving car. Further reading: The study; and MIT Technology Review.

6 of 535 comments (clear)

  1. Passengers... by Bert64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    A self driving car should protect its passengers first or they wouldn't sell. Who would willingly ride in a vehicle that would intentionally sacrifice their life for any reason?

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    1. Re:Passengers... by Aighearach · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A self driving car should protect its passengers first or they wouldn't sell. Who would willingly ride in a vehicle that would intentionally sacrifice their life for any reason?

      No, actually, we're going to let the traffic engineers at the Department of Transportation set the rules, which will be the same as for humans (stay in lane, stop as fast as you can, DO NOT SWERVE) and the engineers won't even ask the public.

    2. Re:Passengers... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The passengers have seatbelts, air bags, and crumple zones to lessen their injuries

      The question is usually framed to already take that into account. They way I have heard it is:

      Choice 1: Hit pedestrian.
      Choice 2: Drive off a cliff and kill the passenger.

      It may be an interesting philosophical question, but it has little to do with reality. A scenario like that is almost never going to happen, and even if it did, a human driver would be faced with the same split second dilemma and be no more likely to make the "correct" decision (whatever that is).

      Far more important is that the SDC would have much better reaction time, more braking distance, better control of steering, more situational awareness of other traffic, and thus better able to kill no one.

    3. Re:Passengers... by mark-t · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Choice 1: Hit pedestrian.
      Choice 2: Drive off a cliff and kill the passenger.

      While this is an interesting hypothetical scenario, I might suggest that the number of times that this sort of thing has actually been any kind of real choice to have to make, particularly in a situation that was not preventable by paying enough attention to the road in the first place, is probably countable on one hand in the entire history of automobiles, if not actually entirely non-existent.

      The ideal is that the self-driving car would be paying enough attention (tirelessly, I might add) to the road and what lies ahead that this sort of "kill the driver or kill the pedestrian" situation that people like to dream up wouldn't ever arise in practice... an automated car that is genuinely designed for safety would simply not drive so fast in any sort of hypothetically reduced visibility situation that there would not be enough time to stop safely in the first place.

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    4. Re:Passengers... by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This, in a nutshell, is everything wrong with our society. We have way too many people who think that jaywalking and prison rape are equivalent.

      In most countries, jaywalking is not even a crime. In America, it is mostly used by the police to target young people and minorities.

  2. A modest proposal by Bobrick · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How about making sure the only person in harm's way is the one that chose to let a computer drive in their place?