“ if a car detects a sudden obstacle—say, a jackknifed truck—should it hit the truck and kill its own driver, or should it swerve onto a crowded sidewalk and kill pedestrians? A human driver might react randomly (if she has time to react at all), but the response of an autonomous vehicle would have to be programmed ahead of time. ”
I hate this logic. No, it didn’t need to be programmed ahead of time. It should try to avoid crashing. It shouldn’t try to solve a philosophical problem. We don’t want to require our cars to observe it’s surroundings and calculate number of things identified as humans to minimize expected loss of life. That’s difficult and error prone.
If you’re going down a street and something jumps in your way, make the program try not to hit anything. Ideally by braking, because you shouldn’t be going fast enough to not be able to do so based on your environment.
I hate this logic. No, it didn’t need to be programmed ahead of time. It should try to avoid crashing. It shouldn’t try to solve a philosophical problem. We don’t want to require our cars to observe it’s surroundings and calculate number of things identified as humans to minimize expected loss of life. That’s difficult and error prone.
If you’re going down a street and something jumps in your way, make the program try not to hit anything. Ideally by braking, because you shouldn’t be going fast enough to not be able to do so based on your environment.