Why Trolley Problems Matter for the Ethics of Automated Vehicles

Keeling, Geoff

doi:10.1007/s11948-019-00096-1

Cited by 61 publications

(44 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…The utility of trolley dilemmas does not lie in their use as blueprints for crash optimizations (Holstein and Dodig-Crnkovic, 2018). Rather, they are an effective means to elucidate which ethical values are potentially conflicting in accident scenarios and to allow for the design of self-driving cars informed by human values (Gerdes et al, 2019;Keeling, 2019). As argued by Bonnefon et al (2019), trolley dilemmas should not be understood primarily as simulations of real-life scenarios, but as representations of conflicts that emerge on a statistical level: the introduction of self-driving cars will likely put different people at risk compared to today.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moral Judgements on the Actions of Self-driving Cars and Human Drivers in Dilemma Situations from Different Perspectives

Kallioinen¹,

Pershina²,

Zeiser³

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Self-driving cars have the potential to greatly improve public safety. However, their introduction onto public roads must overcome both ethical and technical challenges. To further understand the ethical issues of introducing self-driving cars, we conducted two moral judgement studies investigating potential differences in the moral norms applied to human drivers and self-driving cars. In the experiments, participants made judgements on a series of dilemma situations involving human drivers or self-driving cars. We manipulated which perspective situations were presented from in order to ascertain the effect of perspective on moral judgements. Two main findings were apparent from the results of the experiments. First, human drivers and self-driving cars were largely judged similarly. However, there was a stronger tendency to prefer self-driving cars to act in ways to minimize harm, compared to human drivers. Second, there was an indication that perspective influences judgements in some situations. Specifically, when considering situations from the perspective of a pedestrian, people preferred actions that would endanger car occupants instead of themselves. However, they did not show such a self-preservation tendency when the alternative was to endanger other pedestrians to save themselves. This effect was more prevalent for judgements on human drivers than self-driving cars. Overall, the results extend and agree with previous research, again contradicting existing ethical guidelines for self-driving car decision making and highlighting the difficulties with adapting public opinion to decision making algorithms.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Moral Judgements on the Actions of Self-driving Cars and Human Drivers in Dilemma Situations from Different Perspectives

Kallioinen¹,

Pershina²,

Zeiser³

et al. 2019

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…While it is fair to say that there is no consensus in the literature, I will refine some older arguments and introduce some new ones in support of the position that holds that the 'trolley methodology' is mistaken in some sense (e.g., because the applied trolley problems are irrelevant or misleading for the issue of ethical crashing). Despite broad criticism, application of the trolley methodology has been defended as recently as this year by Geoff Keeling (2020) and became broadly well-known because of the so-called Moral Machine experiment (Awad et al 2018). According to Edmond Awad et al, consumers will only switch from human-driven vehicles to autonomous vehicles if they understand the origins of the ethical principles that are programmed into these vehicles (p. 59).…”

Section: What Is Wrong With the Discussion On Ethical Crashing?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recently, Keeling (2020) attempted to counter this argument by showing that the difference between choices in scenarios with absolute descriptions and standard decisionmaking under risk are not sufficiently different to warrant the claim of a categorical difference (pp. 299-300).…”

Section: What Is Wrong With the Discussion On Ethical Crashing?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Safety requirements vs. crashing ethically: what matters most for policies on autonomous vehicles

Lundgren

2020

AI & Soc

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The philosophical-ethical literature and the public debate on autonomous vehicles have been obsessed with ethical issues related to crashing. In this article, these discussions, including more empirical investigations, will be critically assessed. It is argued that a related and more pressing issue is questions concerning safety. For example, what should we require from autonomous vehicles when it comes to safety? What do we mean by 'safety'? How do we measure it? In response to these questions, the article will present a foundation for a continued discussion on these issues and an argument for why discussions about safety should be prioritized over ethical concerns related to crashing.

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“…Critically, each road user also holds a specific valence, which varies in strength in relation to how that individual user's identity corresponds to a number of set criteria 2 . Beyond the technical limitations of identification, data collection and processing, there are no specific criteria that ought to inform a valence, but can cover features like different age groups, socio-economic levels or professions following the line of the Moral Machines Experiment (Bonnefon et al 2016), or cover forms of morally admirable partiality that might exist between the AV and its passenger(s) (Keeling 2019). Arguably, most of the criteria chosen to inform valences will remain polemic, and given space limitations, it would be unwise to attempt to rehearse the full extent of the debate here.…”

Section: The Concept Of 'Valence'mentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethical Decision Making in Autonomous Vehicles: The AV Ethics Project

et al. 2020

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The ethics of autonomous vehicles (AV) has received a great amount of attention in recent years, specifically in regard to their decisional policies in accident situations in which human harm is a likely consequence. Starting from the assumption that human harm is unavoidable, many authors have developed differing accounts of what morality requires in these situations. In this article, a strategy for AV decision-making is proposed, the Ethical Valence Theory, which paints AV decision-making as a type of claim mitigation: different road users hold different moral claims on the vehicle’s behavior, and the vehicle must mitigate these claims as it makes decisions about its environment. Using the context of autonomous vehicles, the harm produced by an action and the uncertainties connected to it are quantified and accounted for through deliberation, resulting in an ethical implementation coherent with reality. The goal of this approach is not to define how moral theory requires vehicles to behave, but rather to provide a computational approach that is flexible enough to accommodate a number of ‘moral positions’ concerning what morality demands and what road users may expect, offering an evaluation tool for the social acceptability of an autonomous vehicle’s ethical decision making.

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Why Trolley Problems Matter for the Ethics of Automated Vehicles

Cited by 61 publications

References 23 publications

Moral Judgements on the Actions of Self-driving Cars and Human Drivers in Dilemma Situations from Different Perspectives

Moral Judgements on the Actions of Self-driving Cars and Human Drivers in Dilemma Situations from Different Perspectives

Safety requirements vs. crashing ethically: what matters most for policies on autonomous vehicles

Ethical Decision Making in Autonomous Vehicles: The AV Ethics Project

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