Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (5):1275-1289 (2016)
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Abstract |
Self-driving cars hold out the promise of being safer than manually driven cars. Yet they cannot be a 100 % safe. Collisions are sometimes unavoidable. So self-driving cars need to be programmed for how they should respond to scenarios where collisions are highly likely or unavoidable. The accident-scenarios self-driving cars might face have recently been likened to the key examples and dilemmas associated with the trolley problem. In this article, we critically examine this tempting analogy. We identify three important ways in which the ethics of accident-algorithms for self-driving cars and the philosophy of the trolley problem differ from each other. These concern: the basic decision-making situation faced by those who decide how self-driving cars should be programmed to deal with accidents; moral and legal responsibility; and decision-making in the face of risks and uncertainty. In discussing these three areas of disanalogy, we isolate and identify a number of basic issues and complexities that arise within the ethics of the programming of self-driving cars.
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Keywords | Trolley Problem Self-driving cars Algorithms Accident-algorithms Risk |
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DOI | 10.1007/s10677-016-9745-2 |
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References found in this work BETA
The Problem of Abortion and the Doctrine of the Double Effect.Philippa Foot - 1967 - Oxford Review 5:5-15.
Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them.Joshua Greene - 2013 - Penguin Press.
Autonomous Cars: In Favor of a Mandatory Ethics Setting.Jan Gogoll & Julian F. Müller - 2017 - Science and Engineering Ethics 23 (3):681-700.
Responsibility for Crashes of Autonomous Vehicles: An Ethical Analysis.Alexander Hevelke & Julian Nida-Rümelin - 2015 - Science and Engineering Ethics 21 (3):619-630.
View all 9 references / Add more references
Citations of this work BETA
Artificial Intelligence, Responsibility Attribution, and a Relational Justification of Explainability.Mark Coeckelbergh - 2020 - Science and Engineering Ethics 26 (4):2051-2068.
Why Trolley Problems Matter for the Ethics of Automated Vehicles.Geoff Keeling - 2020 - Science and Engineering Ethics 26 (1):293-307.
Attributing Agency to Automated Systems: Reflections on Human–Robot Collaborations and Responsibility-Loci.Sven Nyholm - 2018 - Science and Engineering Ethics 24 (4):1201-1219.
Never Mind the Trolley: The Ethics of Autonomous Vehicles in Mundane Situations.Johannes Himmelreich - 2018 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (3):669-684.
The Ethics of Crashes with Self‐Driving Cars: A Roadmap, I.Sven Nyholm - 2018 - Philosophy Compass 13 (7):e12507.
View all 49 citations / Add more citations
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