Avoiding the intrinsic unfairness of the trolley problem

Holstein, Tobias; Dodig-Crnković, Gordana

doi:10.1145/3194770.3194772

“…Situations of this kind, known as trolley dilemmas (Thomson, 1985), involve two groups of people, one of which must be endangered to spare the other. 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).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Kallioinen

¹

,

Pershina

²

,

Zeiser

³

et al. 2019

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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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“…Situations of this kind, known as trolley dilemmas (Thomson, 1985), involve two groups of people, one of which must be endangered to spare the other. 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).…”

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

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.

show abstract

“…The trolley problem is a classic philosophical expression of this scenario, and its direct relevance and applicability to the challenge of programming driverless cars has been noted on more than one occasion recently (Markoff 2015, p. 61;Nyholm and Smids 2016;Fleetwood 2017;Holstein 2017;Holstein and Dodig-Crnkovic 2018;Wiseman and Grinberg 2018;Himmelreich 2018;Renda 2018;Liu 2018). In a real or imagined future, a self-driving trolley may, in some situations, avoid the trolley problem altogether through a series of prior decisions, such as a judicious application of brakes without need for human intervention to bring this about.…”

Section: Can Robots Teach Us To Be Ethical?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Writing a Moral Code: Algorithms for Ethical Reasoning by Humans and Machines

McGrath

¹

,

Gupta

²

2018

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Abstract:The moral and ethical challenges of living in community pertain not only to the intersection of human beings one with another, but also our interactions with our machine creations. This article explores the philosophical and theological framework for reasoning and decision-making through the lens of science fiction, religion, and artificial intelligence (both real and imagined). In comparing the programming of autonomous machines with human ethical deliberation, we discover that both depend on a concrete ordering of priorities derived from a clearly defined value system.

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Avoiding the intrinsic unfairness of the trolley problem

Cited by 13 publications

References 26 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

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

Writing a Moral Code: Algorithms for Ethical Reasoning by Humans and Machines

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