
Why Self Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill - knwang
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/542626/why-self-driving-cars-must-be-programmed-to-kill/
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kristianp
If two people run out in front of the car, and my option is to swerve to take
out one innocent person on the side-walk, should I stay on the road, harming
the people who broke the road rules? I would be breaking the road rules if I
swerved and also I'd be harming someone who did no wrong.

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tim333
I'm not sure it's true they must be programmed to kill. In general they will
be programmed to avoid killing anyone. I imagine in situations that they do
kill people it will be because the systems failed rather than by calculation.

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cpncrunch
Their hypothetical situation seems a little dubious, and it seems unlikely a
self-driving car would ever allow itself to get into a situation like that in
the first place.

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sokoloff
Because no self-driving car will ever have pedestrians dart out in front of
it?

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mcv
In areas where this is likely to happen, cars don't go that fast and should
have plenty of time to stop. If pedestrians are actively trying to commit
suicide and the only way to prevent that is to kill the driver or an innocent
bystander, then hitting the suicidal pedestrians is preferable.

More generally, I think the car should try to stay on the road and it its lane
whenever possible, and only leave that space when it's absolutely safe to do
so. People on the street have chosen to interact with cars, people on the
sidewalk haven't. And the best way to avoid an accident is usually to brake,
and not to swerve into someone else or into a wall.

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sokoloff
The question the article raises is not "should an autonomous vehicle ever use
its brakes to avoid an accident?" but rather "in a situation where brakes are
insufficient and the controller of the vehicle needs to make a decision about
how to weigh the risks to various people, how should those decisions be made?"

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mcv
That doesn't change the fact that this is a situation that should not occur.
When it happens, someone fucked up. Maybe pedestrians are throwing themselves
into oncoming traffic, or the car has already made some pretty terrible
mistakes.

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pvaldes
... or we could just program an external airbag in the radiator instead and be
more creative. A "capot airbag", why not? People in an automatic car do not
really need to see out to drive.

