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Is my above scenario contrived, yes. Is it demonstrative of the kind of ethical questions that are going to have to be answered by developers, rather than indiv

Is my above scenario contrived, yes. Is it demonstrative of the kind of ethical questions that are going to have to be answered by developers, rather than individuals. It absolutely is. If you note I'm not even dismissive of "self driving cars", I only point out that its going to be INTERESTING if we ever see them. The reality is that at some point, some where, some piece of software is going to have to make a very hard choice. The road will always have exposure to irrational actors (kids, drunks, a random person crashing their bike). Are we at a point where we WANT software making that decision? If I have terminal cancer I might make a different choice than if I just had a baby and I was a human behind the wheel. Will we be able to inform the system that were willing to commit self sacrifice? Is there going to be weighing on the system based on ages of those involved? What happens when someone decides to kill themselves by jumping in front of a self driving car? Lets forget about the legal battle that ensues the first time this happens. We will pretend that no lawyers will be allowed to be involved. The guy who wrote the code that said 4 kids > granny do you tell him? Maybe you have to go back and tell him his code killed 4 kids, and NOT granny and he has to fix it, cause that was wrong? I saved 32,999 people in THEORY but I know my code killed 4, they told me, it was a bug, I have to fix it now. Lets look for a real world example where we see some of this today. Train drivers kill people on a fairly regular basis. Some times its because people choose to kill themselves, sometimes it really is an accident where there was no intent on the part of the person killed. Do you know what happens to those folks? Do you realize the impact these actions have on their lives? They certainly do, its part of the job, they get training before they go out and drive, the get counseling after. For some of them IT DOESNT HELP. Stats aren't people, they don't react the way we want or expect. Like I said it is going to be INTERESTING.

NhanH 11y ago
Shouldn't you got the pick the morality of the car you're in? Which will probably ends up with everyone choosing to protect themselves. And if that causes too much externality to society (some kind of Prisoner Dilemma where everyone tries to protect themselves being the worst?), then we have regulation step in and regulate the morality of the systems. It's not going to be easy, but I don't agree it's harder than the gazillions moral choice we already made as a society nowadays.
- zer00eyz 11y ago
  harder than the gazillions moral choice we already made. Im not so sure on that. The two closest things I can find, that address something "remotely close" are the following, and they more or less drag the law into it (sadly) but it is a sort of moral arbiter: This is an actual case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Dudley_and_Stephens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Dudley_and_Stephens And the more philosophical version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_of_the_Speluncean_Explorers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_of_the_Speluncean_Exp... There is a quote in the Dudley and Stephens one that is rather interesting: "We are often compelled to set up standards we cannot reach ourselves, and to lay down rules which we could not ourselves satisfy. But a man has no right to declare temptation to be an excuse, though he might himself have yielded to it, nor allow compassion for the criminal to change or weaken in any manner the legal definition of the crime."

NhanH 11y ago

Shouldn't you got the pick the morality of the car you're in? Which will probably ends up with everyone choosing to protect themselves. And if that causes too much externality to society (some kind of Prisoner Dilemma where everyone tries to protect themselves being the worst?), then we have regulation step in and regulate the morality of the systems. It's not going to be easy, but I don't agree it's harder than the gazillions moral choice we already made as a society nowadays.

zer00eyz 11y ago
harder than the gazillions moral choice we already made. Im not so sure on that. The two closest things I can find, that address something "remotely close" are the following, and they more or less drag the law into it (sadly) but it is a sort of moral arbiter: This is an actual case: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Dudley_and_Stephens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Dudley_and_Stephens And the more philosophical version: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_of_the_Speluncean_Explorers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_of_the_Speluncean_Exp... There is a quote in the Dudley and Stephens one that is rather interesting: "We are often compelled to set up standards we cannot reach ourselves, and to lay down rules which we could not ourselves satisfy. But a man has no right to declare temptation to be an excuse, though he might himself have yielded to it, nor allow compassion for the criminal to change or weaken in any manner the legal definition of the crime."