Ethics

Spring 2022

Introduction

For this final week you'll read a pair of articles involving self-driving cars. The first is by a business consultant, and isn't all that rigorous, but will set the stage by describing the "moral machine" experiments and laying out some ethical questions to ponder. The second is an article in Wired describing the circumstances around the first pedestrian killed by a self-driving car. It's written for a general audience, and spends more time describing the impact of the events on the car's occupant than perhaps it should, but the story is still compelling and raises a variety of ethical issues worthy of discussion. The optional article describes the moral machine results in a bit more detail if you're interested.

Questions

Here are some questions you might consider as you read:

How would you prioritize Cindy Gordon's "5 ethical pillars"?
In your opinion, what was the cause of the Uber accident? What did the NTSB conclude was the cause?
Who's responsible for the pedestrian's death? (Legally? Morally?)
What might have prevented it?
Why might a self-driving car have to kill someone?
Who should be making the decisions that get built into the software? Who all should be involved or consulted?
If a self-driving car is stopped for speeding, who's responsible?
The U.S. government won't allow autonomous weapons to make "kill decisions" on their own, but doesn't restrict similar decisions built into self-driving cars. Ponder.
How should global manufacturers deal with varying ethical preferences across markets?
Should manufacturers be forced to reveal the details of their self-driving software? To whom?
What are the obligations of software engineers working on this kind of software? When might they be legally liable for outcomes on the road?

Papers

"Driverless Cars And AI Ethics", December 29th 2021, Cindy Gordon" (link)
"‘I’m the Operator’: The Aftermath of a Self-Driving Tragedy", Lauren Smiley, March 8th 2022, Wired Magazine. (link)
[OPTIONAL] "A Study on Driverless-Car Ethics Offers a Troubling Look Into Our Values", Caroline Lester, January 24th 2019, The New Yorker. (link)