jrtechs-NodeJSBlog/content/posts/other/morality-of-self-driving-cars.md

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Although the movie *I Robot* has not aged well, it still brings up
some interesting ethical questions that we are still discussing
concerning self driving cars. The protagonist Detective Spooner  has
an almost unhealthy amount of distrust towards robots. In the movie, a
robot decided to save Spooner's life over a 12 year old girl in a car
accident.  This ignites the famous ethical debate of the trolley
problem, but, now with artificial intelligence. The debate boils down
to this: are machines capable of making moral decisions. The   surface
level answer from the movie is presented as **no** when Spooner's
presents car crash antidote. This question parallels the discussion
that we are currently having with self driving cars. When a self
driving car is presented with two options which result in the loss of
life, what should it choose? 

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When surveyed, most people say that they would prefer to have self
driving cars take the utilitarian  approach towards the trolley
problem. A utilitarian approach would try to minimize the  total
amount of harm. MIT made a neat
[website](http://moralmachine.mit.edu/) where it presents you with a 
bunch of "trolley problems" where you have to decide who dies. At the
end of the survey the website presents you with a list of observed
preferences you made when deciding who's life was more important to
save. The purpose of the trolley problem is merely to ponder what
decision a self driving car should make when **all** of its
alternatives are depleted.  

![Moral Machine](media/selfDrivingCars/moralmachine3.png)


We still need to question whether utilitarianism is the right moral
engine for self driving cars. Would it be ethical  for a car to take
into account  you age, race, gender, and social status when deciding
if you get to live?  If self driving cars could access personal
information such as criminal history or known friends, would it  be
ethical to use that information? Would it be moral for someone to make
a car which favored the safety of the passengers of the car above 
others? 

![Moral Machine](media/selfDrivingCars/moralMachine.png)


Even though most people want self driving cars to use utilitarianism,
most people surveyed also responded that they would not buy a car
which did not have their safety as its top priority. This brings up a
serious social dilemma. If people want everyone else's cars to be
utilitarians, yet, have their own cars be greedy and favor their
safety, we would see none of the utilitarian improvements. This 
presented us with the tragedy of the commons problem since everyone
would favor their own  safety and nobody would sacrifice their safety
for the public good. This brings up yet another question: would it be
fair to ask someone to sacrifice their safety in this way? 

In most cases, when a tragedy of the commons situation is presented,
government intervention is  the most piratical solution. It might be
the best to have the government mandate that all cars try to maximize
the amount of life saved when a car is presented with the trolley
problem. Despite appearing to be a good solution, the flaw in this
does not become apparent before you us  consequentialism to examine
this problem. 

![Moral Machine](media/selfDrivingCars/moralMachine6.png)

Self driving cars are expected to reduce car accidents by 90% by
eliminating human error. If people decide to not use self driving cars
due to the utilitarian moral engine, we run the  risk of actually
loosing more lives. Some people have actually argued that since
artificial intelligence is incapable of making moral decisions, they
should take no action at all when there is a situation which will
always results in the loss of life.  In the frame of the trolley
problem,  it is best for the artificial intelligence to not pull the
lever. I will argue that  it is best for self driving cars to not make
ethical decisions because, it would result in the highest adoption
rate of self driving cars. This would end up saving the most lives in
the long run. Plus, the likelihood that a car is actually presented
with  a trolley problem is pretty slim. 

The discussion over the moral decisions a car has to make is almost
fruitless. It turns out  that humans are not even good at making moral
decisions in emergency situations. When we make rash decisions
influenced by anxiety, we are heavily influenced by prejudices and
self motives. Despite our own shortcomings when it comes to decision
making, that does not mean that we can not do better with self driving
cars. However, we need to realize that it is the mass adoption of self
driving cars which will save the most lives, not the moral engine
which we program the cars with. We can not let the moral engine of the
self driving  cars get in the way of adoption.  

The conclusion that I made parallels Spooner's problem with robots in
the movie *I Robot*. Spooner was so mad at the robots for saving his
own life rather than the girl's, he never realized that if it was not
for the robots, neither of them would have survived that car crash.
Does that mean we can't do better than not pulling the lever? Well...
not exactly.  Near the end of the movie a robot was presented with
another trolley problem, but, this time he managed to find a way which
saved both parties. Without reading into this movie too deep, this
illustrates how the early adoption of artificial intelligence ended up
saving tons of lives like Spooners. It is only when the technology
fully develops  is when we can start to avoid the trolley problem
completely.