Some interesting news from MIT was heard on Oregon Public Broadcasting today. As the reality of driverless cars grows near (and we’ll be discussing the labor and environmental implications another time), 2015 online public surveys conducted by MIT researchers revealed that most people would want vehicles programmed to save the maximum number of lives (a utilitarian approach). Yet, if programming that would sacrifice those in the driver’s car to save more lives outside the car, the likelihood of purchasing such a vehicle decreases by a third. Sounds like a species of the tragedy of the commons.
Often when we automate an activity, we end up concealing moral choices by burying it in computer code, or walling it up inside obscure bureaucratic procedures. In the case of driverless cars, it is, for a moment, the reverse: we have to shed light on the millions of individual approaches to how we handle risk when we drive, in order to be able to tell the coder what outcome we want. Save more lives? Save children and old people? Save rich people? Hit animals rather than dent our fender?
A little shudder arises at the thought of vehicle manufacturers and the insurance and medical industries getting their claws into this conversation.
DHR 6-24-2016