Should your robot driver kill you to save a child’s life?
theconversation.com
theconversation.com
I suspect the best collision avoidance algorithm in such scenarios will simply be decelerate as quickly as possible whilst maintaining course. Then a 'best effort' at avoiding a collision can be seen to have been made, and perhaps the pedestrian will survive their injuries. This is what a human driver would have most likely done?
What if the child/small adult (can the computer vision practically recognise the difference) is themselves quite 'evil' (again, another value judgement) and is running in front of robot cars in such situations on purpose?
This is the reason why speed limits are very low in residential and school areas: because it is expected that there are people on the side walks that _could_ possibly change direction, move on the road, and even perhaps stop (fall) there.
Similarly, when driving in the mountains or in the Arizona desert, you might go fast when there are nobody around, but if you see somebody walking on the side, you must take into account his possible changes of dirrection, and therefore slow down. Around highways, there are often fences to prevent people to come close, so that cars may go fast. Also, you don't go as fast when there is fog than when the sky is clear: you have to expect more unknowns when there is fog than when it's clear.
Now, I'm not saying that human drivers apply speed limits (either legal or moral (ie. "bayesian")) often or at all, but they should.
I'm saying that a robotic car will have much less difficulties in controlling scientifically its speed, taking into account the presence of people, animals and other mobile objects surrounding it, their velocities and their possible direction changes. Therefore a "tunnel" situation as described in that articule won't occur (unless there's a bug in the software).
Why should you have to pay for someone else's mistake? If a child runs out in front of a car, it is either their fault or their guardian's fault for allowing them to run into traffic. It's tragic, but to suggest the driver should give up their life for someone else's mistake is ridiculous.
Who in their right mind would get inside a car that is programmed to commit suicide in certain "ethical" circumstances?
By the 'fault' logic, it was nobody else's fault that the rock landed in front of you, why should they die so you can live?
Going right and slamming your semi into the mini-Cooper means you live without a scratch, but good luck to the couple in the car. Going left and hitting the other truck there will probably make your truck flip and give you broken bones, but nobody dies. What now?
For example, the self-driving car you're in is driving by an elementary school at the end of the day, so there are a number of children on the sidewalk. Suddenly, a truck appears coming at your car going in the wrong direction. Should your car take an evasive maneuver onto the sidewalk, with a high likelihood of striking a child?
In traffic law people actually thought about this. First you are to safeguard pedestrians, then cyclists and motorcyclists then cars, then trucks/buses/... and finally yourself. Things like right side of the road, red lights, ... are far down. Things like trains/trams are tricky.
What is not generally understood is that this sequence matters. Most people realize that in order not to block an ambulance, you are not just allowed, but required to run a red light. Less known is that ignoring road safety, to some extent, is legal and required if you're bringing a seriously injured person to the hospital. If you can avoid a collision by crossing to the wrong side of the street, you are required to do that ...
So the legal answer here is simple and well-defined : Assuming you can't move to the other side of the road reasonably safely, you should slam your car into the truck (needless to say, as slowly as possible). You are certainly NOT to take liberties with the safety of pedestrians to avoid hitting a truck.
This is complicated by other laws of course. First you are not expected to do more than a certain "standard" human would do, second in this situation obviously there is a problem of intent when things do go south (did you intend to hit those pedestrians ? What about if you made that choice to avoid the truck ? What if you and the truck both decided to avoid each other and both went for the b). Who is the "root" responsible, and how is the responsibility divided amongst the people who violated the law ? So this makes legal culpability in these sorts of cases a murky area. If you slam your car into a kindergarten to protect yourself, though, I think it's reasonable to expect prison time and a hefty financial problem.
But the answer seems to be : if there is any way to avoid the truck, ignoring all normal traffic laws (but NOT hitting anyone), that's the way to go. If there's not, you hit the truck.
Maybe you'll find this version more interesting: suppose the car has the opportunity to save a dozen people (who are not themselves at fault) by sacrificing you (or failing to do everything in its power to protect you). Should it?
If no, which seems to be the answer you think is obvious, consider that you are far more likely to find yourself as one of the dozen potential people saved than as the sacrifice, especially since we're deciding on the rule for all autonomous cars, not just yours. So following your logic makes it more likely for you to get killed.
What is the practical difference between that and getting into any car operating in an environment with other cars (automated or not) that are "programmed" (whether literally, or as a description of the operator's behavior) to kill you instead of their operator if there is a choice?
I suspect there are various classes of people that would choose this option. Believers of certain religions, old/hill people with high morals or strictly pragmatic, aspirant suicides, risk lovers, etc...
Not for me, though :-)
This seems to assume that the frequency with which drivers (automated or otherwise) are faced with "someone is going to die, you or the other person, and which one depends on your driving choices" situations is very high.
This is not consistent with the evidence.
The answer is not as clear-cut as the example would suggest. First, it's not zero-sum since computer control results in more safety overall. The computer has more information available (e.g. sensor readings on all sides) and can react much faster (eliminating the ~1.5 s typical reaction time [1]). The driver and the kid in the road will both survive more often this way.
Second, drivers can be pretty selfish. E.g. everyday behaviors like cutting people off or running red lights offer little benefit for the cost of endangering everyone on the road. How many would simply set it to "always drive over the kid in the tunnel"?
[1] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/STHF0203_1#.U9wU2...
For example, if a truck driver has the option of hitting another car head-on, or running off the road and just wreaking the truck, they will frequently hit the car.
The reason being, if there's no evidence of a second vehicle in the accident, they will end up being responsible for the loss of the cargo, and lose their job.
Plus, the truck driver will typically survive a head-on with a car.
You're assuming the best possible implementation of autonomous car will be the one which actually arrives on the roads. Given the daunting complexity necessary to even make that feasible,it would surely be the first system of its kind and scale without a considerable number of flaws due to bad programming, exploits, cost cutting, unforseen consequences, etc.
The more 'intelligent' and 'autonomous' the cars are, and the more of them there are on the road, the more likely it is systemic problems will arise. This is not a criticism of the idea of autonomous cars but just an inevitable result of complex systems interacting. Just because they're computers, doesn't mean they won't fail, or that accidents will be so rare as to be not worth considering. Airplanes almost never crash now compared to a century ago, but that doesn't make worrying about air safety, or the affect of automation on pilot competence in the event that manual control becomes necessary, a red herring.
Are other systemic problematic effects known in the current road transportation system? Notably, are there any systemic effects that lead to increasing speed and accidents, rather than traffic jams (not that traffic jams don't cause accidents, since human drivers are running too fast, not expecting jams).
It seems obvious that the two systemic problems above, won't occur with intercommunicating robotic cars.
It would be "fun" to discover new systemic epiphenomenon with robotic cars, but I would expect them to be more discreet and even less "catastrophic".
Looking at Issac Amimov's laws, I believe that the 0th law would cause the child to die because that outcome reasonably reduces the number of humans potentially harmed in the situation (as driving into the wall may cause unpredictable results including additional harm to humans).
Looking at the EPRSC / AHRC principles of robotics, I believe the child would die because robots are artifacts and should not invoke an emotional response.
Put it another way: this is one of those very rare occasion where collective cooperation (a la prisoner's dilemma) is possible. Shouldn't that... be the thing we want?
You being able to make a decision about the way your autonomous vehicle behaves which could result in a greater risk to other drivers is no different than the risk you present anyway just by having access to a steering wheel, and making the equivalent decision directly. Changing the radio isn't going to kill anybody, but letting you decide the ethics of your car just might. What happens when two cars with conflicting driver-set ethical subroutines come into contact? Do they debate? It doesn't work unless there's a single standard.
I'm not saying we should be able to rewrite the code. But a single user option like "Should I sacrifice your life to save another? [Yes/No]" just means the decision tree has another branch point that still leads to the same set of possible actions. It can still make better decisions about driving than the human driver because it still has the access to more information and more accurate controls. Deciding to crash me into a tunnel wall to save a child is not really about "driving safely."
If you answer yes to this question, aside from being a scumbag, if it does actually lead to an action taken by the car, you could face execution (worst possible case, granted, but there's a minimum prison sentence too).
Plus, this would hardly be the first way for cars to kill you. Brakes can fail, the steering column can fail, the gas tank can fail. All these things are rare, but certainly not impossible, and quite likely to kill or at least injure you.