Essay On Self-Driving Ethics

TL;DR – How will self-driving make ethical choices and who is more likely to get hurt when there is no way to avoid a collision.

The article “Top Safety Official Doesn't Trust Automakers to Teach Ethics to Self-Driving Cars” by Rosemblum (2016) takes a look at how ethics will could and should be a part of self-driving cars. The self-driving cars being tested today have a lot of sensors, computing power and algorithms to determine how to navigate on highways and through the street of cities, but each of the test cars still has a human in the car who can take control if needed. The human is currently the one who is empowered to make ethical decisions for the self-driving car. In the future, how will self-driving handle ethical decisions. According to the article, the government will need to step in and mandate self-driving cars must be able to make ethical decisions. The issue brought up in the article is how will the car manufacturers program the ethical decision when there is no clear cut way to prevent harm. If the self-driving car has to decide between a potential fatal head-on collision or hitting people on the sidewalk with potential fatal consequences, then how will it decide and will it be the right decision.
The debate about if
It is very nice to have an article that does not lean too far in one direction and provides input from different points of view. Everyone involved in the manufacturer or self-driving cars, consumers who are waiting on availability of self-driving cars and lawmakers should consider reading this article to see both side of the argument and see a glimpse of the potential issues. It would have been nice to have the fact that no human or device will ever be perfect be directly mentioned in the article, but it is more of a personal preference and may not help the article too