4 min to read
Autonomous Ethics
Ethics in Self Driven Vehicles
Ethics, Life & Death and Self Driving Vehicles …
A look at the questioning and convoluted ethical paradigms governing the safety and ethical feasibility of self driven automobiles …
Few decades back we were head over heels to see and hear about cars that drive themselves, that navigated when the driver fell asleep and performed maneuvers without human supervision. This vision of having self-driven automobiles or commonly known as Self-Driven-Vehicles (SDVs) have now become more than a concept and as we all know, the world has embarked on this new endeavour of giving more autonomy to machines to reduce human effort.
It is not a mystery that self-driving cars have become technologically feasible. The million dollar question now is: are they ethically feasible?
What is ethical feasibility in SDVs?
Mass usage of self-driving vehicles is only a few steps away and regardless of the respective complexity in mechanics and algorithms, the severity dwells where the vehicle has to take life and death decisions that can lead to unpleasant repercussions.
This is because of the conscious decision making process that is inherent in human nature being a serious gap to be bridged once it comes to the ethical frameworks used in the car’s decision-making process.
The million dollar question
In the scope of an unavoidable accident, what is the effect of different ethical frameworks that govern the decision-making of self-driving cars?
What exactly is ethics in autonomous ?
When observed in a more simpler sense, the concept of ethics used in autonomous cars is simply the morals and values that humans code into the internal functionality of the car itself. It is a known fact that the single most complex barrier in the world of artificial intelligence and artificial general intelligence as a whole is the paradigm of consciousness.
How do we code consciousness to a machine? Now this is the wider array of ambiguity and convolution reside in transferring 100% of ethical thinking of humans to SDVs. It’s the matter of solving the case of transferring the conscious ethical decision making process of humans to an autonomous vehicle to allow making split second, life and death decisions such as a human would.
To solve this query of how autonomous vehicles should respond during potentially fatal collisions, numerous engineers, computer scientists and AI experts set out to investigate what human drivers would make in a life and death situation. There are even games built to simulate such scenarios and understand how humans across the world would think and act. The moral machine by MIT is one such example. This would on the other hand allow the scientists to gather more data and analyze them to get into a more universal understanding of the way humans think as a whole.
Different Ethical Frameworks in use as of now
As of now, there are widely used ethical frameworks, not entirely isolated from each other but widely used as an ensemble of each with overlapping areas of interest. The most commonly used base ethical frameworks when it comes to autonomous vehicles can be pointed out as follows:
1.Utilitarianism 2.Deontology 3.Relativism 4.Absolutism (monism) 5.Pluralism
I would not go into detail about these ethical frameworks as of now, but if interested a great paper to wrap the head around the complex structure of ethics and autonomy could be found here.
Autonomous driving in real life
Recently, Tesla released this video in which it stated about having achieved “Full Self-Driving”.
However the gravity lies in how safe and feasible the vehicle in tackling the spontaneous driving conditions of a real life road.
In a recent article under the name, Every Single Self-Driving Car Accident And Death lists, it mentions about nine accidents involving autonomous vehicles out of which four caused fatalities.
The most recent fatality it reported was the one involving a Tesla Model X on March 23, 2018. Where the driver of the car died when it hit a highway barrier.
In a holistic viewpoint, the great leap humans have taken into bringing the world of sci-fi to the real world is commendable and fascinating. But at the same time there lies the question of safety and ethical feasibility as much as the technological feasibility is achieved and applicable.
The question still remains at large and the day of complete autonomy in driving with complete ethical feasibility is yet to be achieved.
Feel free to share your thoughts and comments on this and it will be a fruitful discussion to collectively undertake, without a doubt…
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