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"This is a moral and ethical dilemma that a team of researchers have discussed in a new paper published in Arxiv, led by Jean-Francois Bonnefon from the Toulouse School of Economics."

Engineers?

I think that if a car does get into this situation, it will not know it until it is too late. If the situation happens, the car designers will eventually know about it an make patches to correct it (For example, defining procedures for specific roads that are tricky to navigate for whatever reason). If the situation doesn't happen, then when it happens will be the first or among the first time that it happens and the car will not be programmed to detect it. If you try to imagine crazy hypotheticals then program for them, that software is more likely to kill someone than save someone because it is not grounded in real data. The code you don't write can't have bugs.

Probably in most cases, as with current pedestrian deaths by cars, the pedestrian will be ruled to have been acting unsafely, leading to their own death. Why should I die because someone else was being an idiot and walking where they shouldn't be? I say program the car to not kill anyone and most of all protect itself, but deaths will still occur - way less than the current number to be sure, but do not ever ask an engineer to program a non-military vehicle to intentionally cause serious injury or death.

That... is actually a pretty damn good point which I can't argue with.

And upon researching Jean-Francois Bonnefon's credentials, I've now seen that he is a psychologist people bring in to research things like these. So not even an engineer, though one assumes it must have been nervous companies and engineers who prodded a study to be performed. A pretty weak assumption, now that I actually examine it. It's a shame they don't name other participants in the study.

It really should be thought about, but I think primarily by people who actually are aware of the realities of the situation. The survey is trying to gauge market acceptance for a product that isn't in development, as far as i'm concerned.

What I really don't want is for AVs to NOT happen, aside from being super cool, AVs are going to kill way less people and consume much less fuel and get people to where they are going faster.

Can't wait!

There are already quite a few prototypes in existence, so it seems inevitable at this point. And I've wanted one ever since seeing the Audi RSQ in I, Robot.

I think that Automated cars provide an amazing opportunity for "super mass transit", where all the cars are publically or corporately owned and you simply hail one with an app or similar "device" it arrives at you takes you to your destination and rejoins the active list.

It's like a super taxi service.

It could be centrally controlled as well, allowing for emergency services to divert traffic allowing for faster and safer routes to where they are needed. And could mean that traffic flow and freight transport was significantly more efficient.

The whole process seems to be more energy efficient in general and could even possibly be fully electric. With cars going in to charge at large car park charging areas automatically when needed. And speaking of the need for car parks would be reduced.

OK maybe I have gone a little nuts with the speculation, but I really like the idea...

Though I suppose maybe some people like owning cars 

Also apologies for slightly diverting the topic.

Hannah, you've just reached 666! What are you doing to celebrate? And don't answer it, otherwise your post count will continue past it.

And no worries, I really don't care about going off topic. When someone feels like they want to make a point about the original topic, they can just go right ahead.

Interesting discussion so far! 

I would have to say that, assuming sensors were accurate enough to differentiate a human from an elk herd or something, the car should be programmed to prevent the greatest number of fatalities.  It could also theoretically calculate the greatest loss to the society.  That technology would eventually develop, too.  So in the event of a minivan containing a mother and her three children running into a group of elderly persons crossing a road, the car might even hit a few of the elderly persons to maximize the number of years of life left in the entire group of people.  (Ex:  a 5 year old would be avoided at pretty much all costs, because the child has 80ish years to live versus an 87 year old, who has already lived 87 years.) 

When you get into putting morality into computers the debate really can get quite strange, but still fascinating. 

The way I see it: and this is all just my opinion ion by the way, I couldn't properly back any of it up so take it as you will.

Anyway, while I would personally want to try everything in my power to avoid the other potential victims, I wouldn't even mind having an automated system online to allow this. However I firmly believe that even if every car was automated, that this ability should be voluntary to the occupant of the vehicle because while I would prefer this, as Laurentus just stated ~25% of respondents to a study wouldn't.

For me, personally, the idea of a machine potentially killing it's possibly unwilling user in order to protect the also potentially disagreeing others seems wrong to me. I would not hold anything against any driver who disabled such an ability in their vehicle, and I severely dislike the idea of it potentially being mandatory.

To relate back to the metaphors earlier, in my opinion, I would stop the train personally, but I would never push someone else in front of it, that person themselves should decide whether or not they take that action in that strange scenario, I am not willing to kill someone for the "greater good" I believe that's a bad way of thinking, but as I say it is personally mine.

What do you think?

I think having it optional is a good idea for several reasons.

I think I've been watching too much horror flicks lately, but if every automatic car was REQUIRED to swerve into something that could almost definitely kill the passenger just to save the pedestrian, someone with a murderous mindset could REALLY take advantage of that.  After all, it's not murder since the car was saving the person from being crashed into...right?

Outside of that morbid thought, I just agree that people shouldn't be morally forced to make that choice.  If you want to go that route and keep that feature so that you can avoid taking someone's life, then that's great.  But if you're more into self preservation and screw the other person, that's fine too.  We all have our choices to make, and they should be ours to make alone...not something forced into us, and this includes deciding whether you want to save a person's life by offering yours in the process, or saving your life at the cost of theirs. 

It's essentially the age old moral dilemma:  You're given a gun and forced to make a decision between who lives and who dies: The first choice is a family member/good friend/loved one.  The second choice is a total stranger whom you've never even met before, but you know they have a family of their own.  The third choice is to use the gun on yourself so that neither has to die.  And of course the last choice is to try to find some way to turn the tables so that absolutely no one dies...but let's say that choice is impossible.

In reality, nobody is ever going to give an exact truthful answer to that, and the response is always going to be different.  A lot of people will easily say they'd kill the stranger because it's someone they don't know, and they'd rather save their family member/loved one and themselves than to save someone they've never even met before.  Others may say they'd kill the loved one because the stranger deserves to be with their family...and of course they want to protect their own life.  And some will say themselves because it's not fair to choose to kill someone else when you could just sacrifice yourself so that they both live on.

But in the end, answering questions is meaningless until you're thrown into the actual situation.  It's easy to say "Oh, well I'd make this choice" if you're given a scenario...but it's really quite amazing how quickly everything changes once that scenario becomes reality.  Someone may say they'd take their own life in that scenario...but just imagine the tension and utter feeling of terror that will appear if that person was actually IN that situation for real.  Would they still hold true to what they said and sacrifice themselves?  Or would self preservation come into play and they choose to take someone else's life instead?

It's really quite an intriguing topic to fall into.

It certainly is, and throughout history, people have pretty much proven that the instinct for self-preservation is only overridden by the instinct for procreation and keeping one's children alive. Only a rare few choose suicide.

Did one of us write this issue?

Spoiler

The development of self-driving cars has led to debate about what they should be programmed to do in the event of an emergency.

The Debate

"It's pretty simple, really," opines freshman college student Colleen Christmas on her popular weekly podcast, 'Overthinking It.' "The car should be programmed to minimize injuries. For example, if it's tooling along a freeway and a schoolbus overturns ahead, the car should prioritize saving the greater number of lives, by slamming itself into the nearest wall."

Accept

"I must say, that could be a hard sell to the public, cars that may decide to murder their drivers," says LS-Motors Head of Marketing Stan Li. "I haven't done a focus group. But that's my feeling. Look, it's perfectly legal today for a human driver to mow down as many schoolchildren as necessary to save his or her own life. Likewise, self-driving cars must prioritize saving the driver's life above all else. Otherwise, why would anyone buy one?"

Accept

"This whole debate is ridiculous," says Clint Song, a software engineer who is fixing the fonts on your computer. "To be honest, these schoolbus scenarios sound like something dreamed up by a Philosophy 101 professor, not something that will actually happen in real life. It's not the place of software to weigh the value of human life! Just program them to follow the road rules at all times!"

This is the position your government is preparing to adopt.

"Oh my God, I HATE those!" says impatient motorist Kathleen Anderson. "They've been testing them near where I work. They drive like my grandmother, and she's in a coma. The other day I was late to work because the so-called Smart Car ahead was waiting for a squirrel to cross the road. A squirrel! I had to swing into oncoming traffic to get around it. And I had to hose the squirrel off my car afterward. Ban self-driving cars!"

Accept

The Government Position

The government has indicated its intention to follow the recommendations of Option 3.

It'd be funny if one of us did—but it'd also be a great coincidence!

Pretty funny.. =p
We all know how we should vote right?

Grrrr