Nov
15
2017
November 15, 2017
As driverless cars grow more and more common on roadways, automotive engineers, regulators and consumers will have to wrestle with the ethical choices the vehicles are programmed to make, says Azim Shariff, assistant professor of psychology and social behavior.
Today, drivers themselves make those choices: for example, to edge closer to a bicyclist and farther from a semitruck, thereby protecting themselves and endangering the cyclist. But in the future, algorithms will make those choices for people.
This fundamental ethical tradeoff, of "apportioning risks among people on the road, is going to happen all the time," Shariff told The New York Times. "It already does."