ipl-logo

What Are Ethical Issues Surrounding Vehicle Artificial Intelligence?

1787 Words8 Pages

As we move into the future, the automotive industry is slowly inching towards fully-autonomous vehicles. It’s important to define fully-autonomous as a vehicle that is capable of driving itself without needing any type of driver assistance, such that the everyone in the vehicle is a passenger. Even though production of self-driving cars has not begun, the discussion of ethical issues surrounding vehicle artificial intelligence has. The range of issues include crash optimization, algorithm transparency for end users, loss of jobs and overall vehicle security.
There is a important distinction between crash avoidance and crash optimization, the former is engaged before the latter. If the vehicle has determined that the crash is unavoidable, then …show more content…

The utilitarian perspective would say that the vehicle should choose the outcome that results in the least amount of death, in other words, “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness” (Mill). Mill’s utilitarian perspective extends on this by also including the quality of the happiness because “some kinds of pleasure are more desirable and more valuable than others” (Mill). For example, saving a life is more valuable than saving an empty vehicle. On the other hand, social contractarianism would say that the crash optimization algorithm should be chosen where fairness is prioritized over safety. Rawls’ believes that under a social contract everyone should be treated equal, therefore everyone must be afforded the same rights. In creating a crash optimization system, Rawls would most likely say that at a minimum it should follow both the liberty and difference principles. The liberty principle says “each person has an equal right to a fully adequate scheme of equal basic rights and liberties, which scheme is compatible with a similar scheme for all” (Rawls). And the difference principle says that “social and economic inequalities are to satisfy two conditions: first, they must be attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity; and second, they must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantages members of society.” (Rawls). By this argument, crash optimization is not applicable because it wouldn’t be able to afford everyone the same scheme in every

Show More
Related
415 Words | 2 Pages

One ethical issue of driverless cars the choice of action when facing an inevitable accident with another party. In this situation, the car has to decide which party to harm. This means the people developing the car software may face the issue of deciding different values or worth on human lives or leaving it to the machine learning software to decide itself. Another issue is whether driverless cars should fully prevent human interaction or still allow humans to control the car if and when they see fit. This may raise the question of whether human error or software error was the cause of any accidents.

Read More
977 Words | 4 Pages

And I’m not sure that’s the best thing,” says Oren Etzioni, a computer scientist at the University of Washington and the CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. These situations are terrible, and nobody likes the thought of a car that kills, but these decisions must be made if there is no human being behind the wheel. So why not make them to follow the law. If a person was driving, it’s a reflex to swerve if safely possible. Modeling the car's decisions after human’s reactions is the most ethical way to handle the swerve or hit issue with completely autonomous

Read More
1790 Words | 8 Pages

This approach says that a society is in some sense is an agreement amount all those who make up the society. In the analogy Rawls shows his disagrements and gives solutions or what he things is a more just way of doing such things. Rawls starts off by saying “I believe that the contrast between the contract view and utilitarianism remains essentially the same in all these cases. There fore I shall compare justice as fairness with familiar variants of intuitionism, perfectionism, and utilitarianism in order to bring out the underlying difference in the simplest way.” Rawls strongly opposes utilitarianism.

Read More
324 Words | 2 Pages

The real solution to avoid car accidents is at our door, and it is going to change the world. The first self-driving car is supposed to be on the market in 2017. People are trying to make it the best as possible and we are going to see a big difference in a few

Read More
644 Words | 3 Pages

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)

Read More
492 Words | 2 Pages

Communications of the ACM, 58(8), 19-20. This article talks about the moral challenge between driverless cars and drivable cars. The article introduces how driverless cars can out preform normal cars because, the driverless car will have greater perceptive abilities, better reaction times, and will not suffer from distractions (from eating or texting, drowsiness, or physical emergencies such as a driver having a heart attack or a stroke). Also the article states that 90% of crashes are due to human

Read More
1290 Words | 6 Pages

Rawls attempts to establish a reasoned account of social justice through the social contract approach. This approach holds that a society is in some sense an agreement among all those within that society. If a society were an agreement, Rawls asks, what kind of arrangement would everyone agree to? He states that the contract is a purely hypothetical one: He does not argue that people

Read More
1371 Words | 6 Pages

To begin, John Rawls’ concept of justice is looked at in terms of social justice. Rawls challenged the ideal of justice as equivalent to fairness. Instead, Rawls argued that we are in a social contract, behind a veil of ignorance, and this is the way to fairness. Rawls’ concept is discussed thoroughly in A Theory

Read More
1102 Words | 5 Pages

If punishment can be shown to promote effectively the interest of society, then it is justifiable, otherwise it is not. Seeing as the main characteristic of Utilitarianism is to maximize utility (i.e happiness/good), it consequently follows that punishment should be applied when it leads to improved overall circumstances in a given situation. One main argument for punishment in the Utilitarian view, is that of the deterrent effect it has, hence, threatening potential offenders in order to discourage them from breaking the law. This places the practice of punishment under strictly preventative and deterrent means. In light of this, Rawls points to the shortcomings and common criticisms of the Utilitarian model for justifying punishment.

Read More
1453 Words | 6 Pages

This technology would undoubtedly allow the drivers of the future much more freedom, right? While autonomous cars may seem a viable solution, they offer many unintended drawbacks. For example, although driverless cars may remove the human error of driving, they do not provide adequate decision making. Driverless cars present a moral dilemma upon closer inspection (Lin).

Read More
1253 Words | 6 Pages

According to Rawls, justice is what society agrees is just. Justice is how we relate with others and does not make sense for a single person. Rawl’s social contract theory is based on the justice that people choose together. His main idea of a theory of justice considers what kind of society people would choose if they did not know what place that would be in within this society. Rawls refers to this state as the original position.

Read More
1175 Words | 5 Pages

The main confusion of utilitarianism is that it has several interpretations. One of them claims that individuals should act for the public utility in favor of their own benefits. This first interpretation is an egoistic one, because people act in favor of the community with the only aim to have their own profits afterwards. Even though Rawls and Mill’s theories present similarities, the fundaments of the theories are the exact opposite. Rawls natural right theory privileges human rights over any other duty, whereas Mill’s utilitarian theory favors society over individual and natural rights.

Read More
417 Words | 2 Pages

He explains we must put ourselves in the original position for equality and behind the “Veil of Ignorance”. This is done by not having knowledge about the different aspects of the issue like: race, gender, social class, and so on. It’s interesting when Mr. Sandel addresses at the beginning of the lecture that if we were behind the Veil of Ignorance Rawls believes we wouldn’t choose utilitarianism. This is because as we know Utilitarianism is good to the

Read More
869 Words | 4 Pages

In A Theory of Justice, Rawls describes justice as “the first virtue of social institutions”, and as a matter of fairness. He sets out his aim for a theory building on the social contract idea, as a feasible alternative to classical utilitarian conceptions of justice (Rawls, 1971, p. 3). In seeking an alternative to utilitarianism, Rawls argues against what he regards as the prevailing dominant theory. He comments that in the utilitarian view of justice “it does not matter, except indirectly, how the sum of satisfactions is distributed among individuals” (Idis, p. 23). In other words, utilitarianism does not take seriously the distinction between individuals (categorizing everyone in one branch).

Read More
2043 Words | 9 Pages

We have to think about who will be held responsible if something goes wrong and a car accident happens, with the involvement of autonomous cars. If the ethics of this issue disputed enough, and what is it considered to be ethic or not in this field. An autonomous car means that the driver is free of command on the entire journey. The car is responsible for changing lanes, direction, to pull over in cases of need, to accelerate or slow down, according to road conditions.

Read More

More about What Are Ethical Issues Surrounding Vehicle Artificial Intelligence?

Related Topics

Open Document