Self-Driving Mercedes Will Be Programmed to Sacrifice Pedestrians

Programming language designers have been meeting in secret in order to make critical decisions related to the advent of ubiquitous self driving technologies. A decision on how to handle this is imminent. Participants include all mainstream languages, C, C++, Python, etc.

The currently winning proposal is to extend the standard "if" conditional statement (or the closely related "switch" construct) to include another option designed for self driving cars.

Programmers today can opt to use "if", "else if" and "else" or "case" and "default". The proposal would be to add a "fuck!" option to these statements.

While usage isn't fully defined yet, the idea is that there are instances when no reasonable decision can be made. In these cases "else" or "default" don't quite capture or convey the critical nature of having to make what is, effectively, an impossible decision. Hence the introduction of "fuck!". Here's example pseudo-code:

    if(some_condition):
    {...}
    else if(some_other_condition):
    {...}
    else: // Unknown but not critical condition
    {...}
    fuck!:  // Critical condition for which there are no good options
    {...}

Language designers expect to issue an official announcement within the next five years. As is to be expected, there are no good options here and they hesitate to even suggest that "fuck!" should be integrated into these languages but they seem to have no options left at this point.

1) This is from 2016.

2) Mercedes will face huge, possibly ruinous lawsuits from the families of anyone killed by a self-driving Mercedes. And investigations from legislators.

In the example they give, the Mercedes would choose to kill multiple innocent bystanders to save one occupant in the vehicle...even though it is a mechanical failure of the vehicle that put anyone at risk in the first place.

Technologists have this absurd view of the future where they think that "computers" or "AI" are magical fantasy words that makes real-world consequences go away. But if that horrific event were actually to come to pass, the programmers of the vehicle would likely be tried for manslaughter, and I'd give at worst even odds on a conviction. I'd also put money down on the NHTSA banning self-driving Mercedes (and possibly even all self-driving vehicles) until their programming is corrected and audited. And on vigilantes everywhere vandalizing every Mercedes they see.

> So far, the highest-profile death in a self-driving car was when a Tesla crashed on May 7, 2016, while in Autopilot mode.

Ugh why does the media keep repeating incorrect information?

That was not a self driving car.

It was a car with a driver who was not paying attention.

The reasons for his not paying attention are up for debate (ranging from he perceived the car, incorrectly, as being self driving, to he was being careless, to the utterly crazy assertion that Tesla or Elon intentionally tricked him into thinking the car was self driving...).

Regardless of where the truth on the driver’s reasons lie, the underlying fact is that the car did not have self driving software installed on it yet.

This is quite a useless article IMO. No-one drives selflessly and suicidaly altruistic anyway. The article's author is shaming and criticizing Mercedes for making this design decision, while ignoring all the practical aspects of the technology. These sorts of decisions will have to be made by self-driving cars at some point, and its not like self-driving cars will be murderous and seeking out people to splat. I'm sure that if a life has to be taken and a machine is going to be judge, jury, and executioner - most people would generally prefer that the machine spare them. Considering that this tech is on its way in the near future regardless if ethical philosophers are ready or not, and barring some legislation forcing a set of priorities for the machine to take into account, I would prefer that the car I spent tens of thousands of dollars on prioritize my life over someone else's. It would be a sales and PR embarrassment/nightmare to market that the car might sacrifice its occupants if the car deems that it's for 'the greater good'.

I know this was from 2016, but I'd think that a self-driving vehicle would be programmed to recognize, at a minimum, all humans in the direction of travel, and would command the vehicle to avoid such obstacles - as much as possible and within the limits of physics and its mechanical systems.

In an accident, it should continue to do this to the best of its ability. Let's say something weird like a ball joint fails while driving at speed on the freeway. Now, for those of you that don't know, in a regular car this is a bad situation - essentially, your wheel is about to fall off and you have limited to no steering control.

But if the car hit the brakes, turned the wheel (however ineffective that may be), and/or did other inputs to try to avoid a pedestrian on the sidewalk, or another car, or whatever - in an attempt to come to as safe a stop as possible...

...but it still injured or killed somebody - then I'd say it did the best it could, same as a good-to-great driver would. Assuming it logged everything about everything; what went wrong, when it sensed it, what it did in response, what it saw or sensed, etc - then I'd say it should be exonerated, or at worst "charged" with involuntary manslaughter or something of that nature.

If it was programmed (whatever that means, ultimately - I'm just an amateur self-driving vehicle enthusiast; I've taken a few MOOC courses on self-driving vehicle technology, including the Udacity nanodegree for Self-driving Car Engineers - so I know some things about how this stuff really works from a code and mechanical and sensor perspective, but I am no expert) to do the best it could to avoid the situation, but it still failed - and it could be shown it tried - then can we hold the vehicle, the owner, or the manufacturer responsible?

I suppose if maybe the driver (owner?) knew they had a failing ball joint (or whatever) that led to the accident (how they would know this? especially on a fairly new vehicle) - maybe fault or blame could be laid there. Or if road conditions caused the problem (chuckhole causing a blowout at speed?) - maybe the city/state?

I find these kind of discussions about AI cars odd...

Do AI cars really have to choose who to potentially wound or kill in a collision situation? Should the AI analyze absolutely everything before making any control choices whatsoever? Why? What if the time spent on this analysis will lead to more casualties?

Humans act in a random way when faced with a vehicle collision situation. Some freeze and fail to act, some divert to either left/right, some hit the brakes too softly, some hit the brakes hard, some accelerate by mistake (!) and so on.

Fully autonomous computers driving cars, if it ever will happen outside of more or less ideal road and weather situations [x], will be like humans, except with more deterministic (and limited) choices of action. I have a hard time believing there will be rationalizing over the perceived value of potential victims or anything of that kind.

[x] I mean conditions of high winds with watery sleet and darkness sprinkled with water glares, near zero C, very bad visiblity, in a situation when my car might say "sensors blocked".

Edit: footnote. I still don't know how to do footnotes properly.

At some point we're going to have an entirely new field of study specifically for this situation. I propose the name "Quantitative Philosophy". The goal is to merge AI research, philosophy and law to determine the "correct" choice in complicated situations when the agent of action has time to consider all possibilities.

Without a by-in from academia, law, legislatures and society as a whole, any action Mercedes takes in this situation will get them in trouble. In addition, we could either see premature or delayed adoption of AI.

Car manufacturers have absolutely no incentive to care about anyone outside the vehicle until they start being held liable for collisions and that's why any talk about self driving cars being safer is naive at best or disingenuous at worst.

Those ML and AI engineers better rethink that logic, as it is equivalent to the reckless taking of human lives, i.e. criminally negligent homicide.

But only if they are perceived as a potential threat to the car's shiny paint finish.

This article was published in 2016.