Patrick Lin Here's A Terrible Idea Summary

Patrick Lin’s article Here’s a Terrible Idea: Robot Cars with Adjustable Ethics Settings discusses the “moral dilemma” (Lin, 2014) that autonomous vehicles introduce into the world. The root of the ethical problem is in the event of an inevitable collision or crash who does the vehicle make the decision to save. The question suggests the concepts of egoism and utilitarianism, (both previously discussed in this course), the different possibilities based on what split-second decision the autonomous vehicle makes, and the fact that there is no easy solution to this dilemma.

In the article, Lin describes the options manufacturers face with an example similar to the utilitarianism “trolley problem” (Lin, 2014) where a car would be set on a collision course to hit and kill five people or it can swerve and only kill one individual. Thus, the manufacturers are faced with a “no-win” (Lin, 2014) situation whereby they can program the car to swerve,

Since the usage of non-autonomous vehicles results in unpredictable situations, attempting to structure what would occur in these split-second scenarios is difficult. It also puts heavy responsibility on determining what the ‘right’ decisions are in any situation and on ensuring the “robot cars” (Lin, 2014) will make these ‘right’ decisions. Thus there is no clear answer to this “moral dilemma” (Lin, 2014) and the manufacturers and programmers of these autonomous vehicles must attempt to ensure that the cars will make the best decision in any situation, or in other words attempt to prepare the car for any situation that could occur or give it the means to make a decision in a new “no-win” (Lin, 2014)