One thing about self-driving cars that very few people even think about is the ETHICS of a self driving vehicle. Sounds silly.
Suppose your car is driving you at a relatively high rate of speed. Two individuals step off the curb into the path of your car. Your car calculates that it will be unable to stop and avoid striking the pedestrians by braking alone. Does your car swerve to avoid the pedestrians, striking a telephone pole and killing you, the driver? Or does it protect you, the driver, by remaining on the road, resulting in the death of two pedestrians? Or one pedestrian? Or four pedestrians? What is the limit of the number of people your car will run over before it decides to let you die instead?
Obviously, the car is not able to make this decision through intelligence. It will "decide" through artificial intelligence. All artificial intelligence is, is the result of algorithms and computer code placed in its "brain" by a programmer. What ethics standards are the programmers following?
There will be a lot of situations such as this that won't be known by the consumer until real world results are seen on the news.
Suppose your car is driving you at a relatively high rate of speed. Two individuals step off the curb into the path of your car. Your car calculates that it will be unable to stop and avoid striking the pedestrians by braking alone. Does your car swerve to avoid the pedestrians, striking a telephone pole and killing you, the driver? Or does it protect you, the driver, by remaining on the road, resulting in the death of two pedestrians? Or one pedestrian? Or four pedestrians? What is the limit of the number of people your car will run over before it decides to let you die instead?
Obviously, the car is not able to make this decision through intelligence. It will "decide" through artificial intelligence. All artificial intelligence is, is the result of algorithms and computer code placed in its "brain" by a programmer. What ethics standards are the programmers following?
There will be a lot of situations such as this that won't be known by the consumer until real world results are seen on the news.