The Ethics of the Robots

The next frontier of self-driving cars is teaching them ethics. It turns out that some split-second decisions are as much value judgments as clear A/B judgments.

A large truck speeding in the opposite direction suddenly veers into your lane. Jerk the wheel left and smash into a bicyclist? Swerve right toward a family on foot? Slam the brakes and brace for head-on impact?

[…] It’s relatively easy to write computer code that directs the car how to respond to a sudden dilemma. The hard part is deciding what that response should be, “The problem is, who’s determining what we want?”