{"id":3685,"date":"2018-10-27T02:14:20","date_gmt":"2018-10-27T02:14:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/driverless-cars-who-should-die-in-a-crash\/"},"modified":"2018-10-27T02:14:20","modified_gmt":"2018-10-27T02:14:20","slug":"driverless-cars-who-should-die-in-a-crash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.styledeals.co.uk\/blog\/driverless-cars-who-should-die-in-a-crash\/","title":{"rendered":"Driverless cars: Who should die in a crash?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"AImage copyright<\/span>
\n Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n

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If forced to choose, who should a self-driving car kill in an unavoidable crash?<\/p>\n

Should the passengers in the vehicle be sacrificed to save pedestrians? Or should a pedestrian be killed to save a family of four in the vehicle?<\/p>\n

To get closer to an answer – if that were ever possible – researchers from the MIT Media Lab have analysed more than 40 million responses to an experiment they launched in 2014.<\/p>\n

Their Moral Machine<\/a> has revealed how attitudes differ across the world.<\/p>\n

How did the experiment work?<\/h2>\n

Weighing up whom a self-driving car should kill is a modern twist on an old ethical dilemma known as the trolley problem.<\/p>\n

The idea was explored in an episode of the NBC series The Good Place, in which ethics professor Chidi is put in control of a runaway tram.<\/p>\n

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Image copyright<\/span>
\n NBC\/The Good Place<\/span><\/p>\n

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Image caption<\/span>
\n
\n In The Good Place, Chidi must make a moral decision
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\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If he takes no action, the tram will run over five engineers working on the tracks ahead.<\/p>\n

If he diverts the tram on to a different track he will save the five engineers, but the tram will hit one other engineer who would otherwise have survived.<\/p>\n

The Moral Machine presented several variations of this dilemma involving a self-driving car.<\/p>\n

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Image copyright<\/span>
\n MIT Media Lab<\/span><\/p>\n

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Image caption<\/span>
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\n Moral Machine: Should a self-driving car save passengers or pedestrians?
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\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

People were presented with several scenarios. Should a self-driving car sacrifice its passengers or swerve to hit:<\/p>\n