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(In this simple case) The vehicle currently traveling toward a stationary object. It has two possible courses of action (sensical action, perhaps would be bett

(In this simple case) The vehicle currently traveling toward a stationary object. It has two possible courses of action (sensical action, perhaps would be better, as it could just continue at full speed, but I'll ignore that), but it can either A) attempt to stop before colliding with the object, or B) it can swerve around the object. Obviously, as stated, two possibilities are that if A the driver has a potential for an increased chance of death or injury and if B a third party has a possible increased chance of death or injury. Now, by shunting to A, that makes a statement of priorities: of all the unknowns, the unknowns about the driver (and passengers) and the states that what might result from A are acceptable to the alternative of B. If this were not so, then we could just as easily say that B is equal and acceptable, in that we can no more guarantee the diminshment of an increase in the potential for injury or death for one or the other party(ies) in either event, therefore, both scenarios are equal, unless they're not. And that most people are unwilling to weight B as as acceptable as A, and, say, flip a coin (or its electronic equivalent), it's clear that a judgement call is being made (based upon values) about what is to be prioritized in the situation (or equivalent situations). [The problem is people then take this specific instance of trolley-like problems and dismiss them as abstract construction, and then dismiss and equivalent problems, regardless of real-world applicability.] And if the purpose of autonomous vehicles, as is often stated, is to reduce the numbers of deaths (40,100 in 2017 in the US) and injuries related to such scenarios and vehicles, we have to have at least a tacit understanding of that which we are implicitly prioritizing, if nothing else. However, if the point is just to apply an ideology in the form of a technology, until everything in our lives is computerized, and considered in terms of computation, or if (as I've talked about before on here) it's about removing the need for God and Man to make the choice, then avoiding such questions is the very (inherently not so) explicit goal, as that we can neither admit to either wanting to create the black box nor that it is a black box. The only way to truly not make the decision is to actually not make it, that is, for the motor vehicle to never be traveling in the first place.

rootusrootus 8y ago
Humans are advised not to swerve around things, as a general rule, so I imagine similar logic works for self-driving cars. You're almost always better off -- for everyone concerned -- to dynamite the brakes and hope for the best. Swerving is a good way to lose control. In any case, you lost me when you got to "the driver has a potential for an increased chance of death." How exactly do you propose a computer will calculate this? Even today's best supercomputers would take multiple orders of magnitude longer to model the odds than it would require to act on them, and even then it would just be a guess. Hell, we judge car safety today by ramming them into objects repeatedly to see how they perform on average, and it still has only a vague relationship to what might happen to you in an actual collision. My point is that it is 100% unfeasible for the computer to model these probabilities, and I see no reason to think it will ever be feasible. Even without getting into the weird things like "what if the pedestrian is 99 years old, or a 20 year old pregnant woman?" the complexities are basically infinite. So the only correct answer I see is for the computer to do exactly what we would expect a competent driver to do today: stop the car as quickly as possible. And assuming it's not overdriving it's sensors (something humans are not supposed to do either) then that should work damn near 100% of the time.
- apocalypstyx 8y ago
  >My point is that it is 100% unfeasible for the computer to model these probabilities I would agree. But my point is that making the decision, and then trying to say we're not making a decision, is disingenuous. So the question becomes: disingenuous to what end? We are making statements about what is or isn't permissible. In the case of the standard human laws, we (generally) find it impermissible for someone in such a situation to save their own life by ending someone else's, in the same way that if A puts a gun to B's head and says shoot C or die, for B to shoot C would be regarded in most jurisdictions as murder, regardless of any part A plays in the scenario. And replicating these laws in machines is perfectly fine. They, like us, have no chance of fully understanding any of the consequences of anything either of us experience, so we can probably only operate in a pragmatic functional fashion. However, in building a machine that replicates what is permissible in this way, as already applied to humans, we must also admit that we are instantiating in hardware a set of rules to, in certain circumstances, kill and or injure people, one way or the other. But we're doing this for the purpose of, also, preventing such where impermissible (and perhaps, even, reducing such overall). Yet, it still remains that we must construct what will do that; we must enact in a very precalculated fashion a predefined, concrete expression of what is permissible, and therefore, what is not permissible. But we, and this is the whole reason, I will contend, at the heart of the argument, and why the debate is a contentious as it is, that is that we very much do not want to admit to the expression. And only by saying the question can't be answered, therefore, here's an answer, can we do that.

rootusrootus 8y ago

Humans are advised not to swerve around things, as a general rule, so I imagine similar logic works for self-driving cars. You're almost always better off -- for everyone concerned -- to dynamite the brakes and hope for the best. Swerving is a good way to lose control. In any case, you lost me when you got to "the driver has a potential for an increased chance of death." How exactly do you propose a computer will calculate this? Even today's best supercomputers would take multiple orders of magnitude longer to model the odds than it would require to act on them, and even then it would just be a guess. Hell, we judge car safety today by ramming them into objects repeatedly to see how they perform on average, and it still has only a vague relationship to what might happen to you in an actual collision. My point is that it is 100% unfeasible for the computer to model these probabilities, and I see no reason to think it will ever be feasible. Even without getting into the weird things like "what if the pedestrian is 99 years old, or a 20 year old pregnant woman?" the complexities are basically infinite. So the only correct answer I see is for the computer to do exactly what we would expect a competent driver to do today: stop the car as quickly as possible. And assuming it's not overdriving it's sensors (something humans are not supposed to do either) then that should work damn near 100% of the time.

apocalypstyx 8y ago
>My point is that it is 100% unfeasible for the computer to model these probabilities I would agree. But my point is that making the decision, and then trying to say we're not making a decision, is disingenuous. So the question becomes: disingenuous to what end? We are making statements about what is or isn't permissible. In the case of the standard human laws, we (generally) find it impermissible for someone in such a situation to save their own life by ending someone else's, in the same way that if A puts a gun to B's head and says shoot C or die, for B to shoot C would be regarded in most jurisdictions as murder, regardless of any part A plays in the scenario. And replicating these laws in machines is perfectly fine. They, like us, have no chance of fully understanding any of the consequences of anything either of us experience, so we can probably only operate in a pragmatic functional fashion. However, in building a machine that replicates what is permissible in this way, as already applied to humans, we must also admit that we are instantiating in hardware a set of rules to, in certain circumstances, kill and or injure people, one way or the other. But we're doing this for the purpose of, also, preventing such where impermissible (and perhaps, even, reducing such overall). Yet, it still remains that we must construct what will do that; we must enact in a very precalculated fashion a predefined, concrete expression of what is permissible, and therefore, what is not permissible. But we, and this is the whole reason, I will contend, at the heart of the argument, and why the debate is a contentious as it is, that is that we very much do not want to admit to the expression. And only by saying the question can't be answered, therefore, here's an answer, can we do that.