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Should a self-driving car kill the baby or the grandma? Depends on where you're from.:
In 2014 researchers at the MIT Media Lab designed an experiment called Moral Machine. The idea was to create a game-like platform that would crowdsource people's decisions on how self-driving cars should prioritize lives in different variations of the "trolley problem." In the process, the data generated would provide insight into the collective ethical priorities of different cultures.
The researchers never predicted the experiment's viral reception. Four years after the platform went live, millions of people in 233 countries and territories have logged 40 million decisions, making it one of the largest studies ever done on global moral preferences.
A new paper published in Nature presents the analysis of that data and reveals how much cross-cultural ethics diverge on the basis of culture, economics, and geographic location.
[...] Awad hopes the results will also help technologists think more deeply about the ethics of AI beyond self-driving cars. "We used the trolley problem because it's a very good way to collect this data, but we hope the discussion of ethics don't stay within that theme," he said. "The discussion should move to risk analysis—about who is at more risk or less risk—instead of saying who's going to die or not, and also about how bias is happening." How these results could translate into the more ethical design and regulation of AI is something he hopes to study more in the future.
"In the last two, three years more people have started talking about the ethics of AI," Awad said. "More people have started becoming aware that AI could have different ethical consequences on different groups of people. The fact that we see people engaged with this—I think that that's something promising."
Journal Reference:
Edmond Awad, Sohan Dsouza, Richard Kim, et al. The Moral Machine experiment, Nature (DOI: 10.1038/s41586-018-0637-6)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @11:03AM (13 children)
Driverless cars only need to do one thing to save more lives than human drivers. Slow down. If they can react faster than a human driver, more collisions will be avoided or become less lethal.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @12:04PM (5 children)
Especially in inclement conditions where there is a high probability of pedestrians being present.
But if self driving cars always followed speed limits then how would government be able to give speeding tickets? They won't! Lost Revenue!! THE HORRORS!!!!!!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @12:07PM (4 children)
and think about it. No one would have to go to driving school anymore and so driving schools would lose money. No, we can't let this happen! Government must protect jobs!!
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday January 28 2021, @05:26PM (2 children)
Driving schools don't employ very many people, and they're not public servants, so no one cares about them.
However, driverless cars threaten the jobs of countless police officers, who "put their lives on the line every day" to protect us by giving us speeding tickets, and we just can't have this. I honestly don't know how governments are going to handle driverless cars because of this factor. If the cars are all driverless, how are the police supposed to pull over random black people and give them bogus tickets, or use it as an excuse to shoot them if they reach for their wallet to get their ID?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 29 2021, @02:07AM
That's easy, just post a speed limit sign with a background pattern the that makes the car misread it but looks normal to humans, then come screaming in lights and sirens blazing. When the self driving car fails to stop (because your 'I'm a cop' transponder was mysteriously 'malfunctioning'), run it off the road and shoot the passengers. Because they are obviously terrorists. Just keeping the people safe, ya know.
I really wish I was joking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 29 2021, @06:46AM
Funny thing happened to a local council here. They got most of their revenue from parking fines. Kept ramping up the fines, making the timing restrictions weirder and employing more arseholes to wander round handing out tickets. Then they hit some some sort of tipping point - the more careful most people were, the more likely violators were to get fined. If you violated a parking law you would get fined, and the fines were large enough to deter almost everyone. Overnight, revenue dropped to practically zero and nearly bankrupted them.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 28 2021, @06:12PM
Classes on driving can be replaced by classes on gender studies, communications, and marketing.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @01:35PM (6 children)
> Slow down.
Seriously, do you think anyone is going to pay to go slower? This is not a marketable solution.
It may be that government enforces it "at the end of a gun" as some people here are prone to write, but I don't think very many people will accept that solution for long.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Thursday January 28 2021, @03:17PM (5 children)
Slower can be faster, you know.
At present, one idiot driver can shut down a six lane highway with one stupid decision. He desperately wants to pass the ugly delivery truck in front of him, so he swerves into the next lane to go faster - and causes a pileup. The AI never got impatient, had no reason to pass the ugly truck, and never swerved into the next lane without checking for danger.
The idiot can and does cause thousands of people to arrive home late after work. The AI simply doesn't care how soon it gets home - it's parameters dictate that it arrive safely. It isn't going to perform some crazy stunt to save 0.3 seconds getting to the off ramp ahead of the delivery truck.
The removal of impulsive, distracted, and half retarded drivers from the decision making process is the biggest reason for putting AI in charge of our cars.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @03:51PM (4 children)
Plus you can masturbate and get drunk on your commute. More than usual.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday January 28 2021, @05:28PM (2 children)
>Plus you can masturbate and get drunk on your commute. More than usual.
I don't think so. I'm sure the police will come up with some excuse as to why they need to pull over random drivers (especially black ones) and threaten them at gunpoint if they see them drinking or masturbating.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday January 28 2021, @06:13PM (1 child)
Occupying a self driving vehicle while black.
Or . . .
Owning a self driving vehicle while black.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @06:50PM
Well the latter means it must be stolen... so... ya. /sarcasm
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 28 2021, @07:24PM
Bah, people did that back in the days of horses and horse drawn carriages. Those things had NI (natural intelligence) driving. Put the horse on a road it knows, point it in the direction of home, give it a nudge to get it started, and it'll go home, no further guidance necessary. People could be passed out from drink, making out, gambling, or doing any number of other things during the ride that have nothing to do with driving. The horse will amble along at a slow pace, which is all the better for those needing or wanting more time.