4 ms·
Ethically, it is not an acceptable trade off. Your question is set in the future, after the action has been shown to be a success. A choice made today cannot be
by stubish 5y ago
Ethically, it is not an acceptable trade off. Your question is set in the future, after the action has been shown to be a success. A choice made today cannot be made ethical retroactively because it turned out to be the right decision. And it is unlikely we can prove the action caused the success in any case, or that not performing the action might have been better (maybe a success tomorrow sets back a better approach by 50 years, causing many more deaths). The better question to ask is 'if beta testing might speed up the transition to FSD and it might reduce the number of road deaths, is it an acceptable trade off?'. At which point you are doing risk analysis and algebra. But given this is the mathematics of human life, you are still in a very dubious ethical area, and the usual answer is still no.
- davej 5y agoOf course, I don't know the future, it was just a hypothetical question, not a mathematical definition. My point was just the answer is not zero because the alternative is human driving and human driving is also not zero deaths. So, at some point we will have to make some sort of trade off that will involve some number of deaths. Unless you are suggesting that the likelihood of deaths should literally be zero before we start rolling out in public?
- stubish 5y agoTo indemnify manufacturers and drivers from the harm, it is going to require extraordinary proof and regulation. Similar to medicine, medical equipment, aircraft. Until that point, it is individual choice to turn it on, and their responsibility for any harm. Same situation as a driver choosing between wearing their eyeglasses or not. What is unclear is which individuals are taking responsibility with driverless trials, or if any indemnification by the state for driverless trials was done ethically.