Ethical questions involving autonomous vehicles are the focus of a new global survey conducted by MIT researchers.
Massive global survey reveals ethics preferences and regional differences. A massive new survey developed by MIT researchers reveals some distinct global preferences concerning the ethics of autonomous vehicles, as well as some regional variations in those preferences. The survey has global reach and a unique scale, with over 2 million online participants from over 200 countries weighing in on versions of a classic ethical conundrum, the 'Trolley Problem.' The problem involves scenarios in which an accident involving a vehicle is imminent, and the vehicle must opt for one of two potentially fatal options. In the case of driverless cars, that might mean swerving toward a couple of people, rather than a large group of bystanders. 'The study is basically trying to understand the kinds of moral decisions that driverless cars might have to resort to,' says Edmond Awad, a postdoc at the MIT Media Lab and lead author of a new paper outlining the results of the project. 'We don't know yet how they should do that.' Still, Awad adds, 'We found that there are three elements that people seem to approve of the most.' Indeed, the most emphatic global preferences in the survey are for sparing the lives of humans over the lives of other animals; sparing the lives of many people rather than a few; and preserving the lives of the young, rather than older people. 'The main preferences were to some degree universally agreed upon,' Awad notes.
TO READ THIS ARTICLE, CREATE YOUR ACCOUNT
And extend your reading, free of charge and with no commitment.
