Moral Machine: Choose who robot cars run over and who they spare
2Moral Machine is a thing that someone at MIT made to answer the question "when faced with a death or death situation, how should a autonomous car choose? Also this autonomous car can somehow look up criminal records and recongize pedestrians quicker than they can apply brakes."
You can take the test and it will ask you to weigh different moral choices.
For example, if an autonomous car is being driven by a criminal, should it plow into a concrete barrier and kill the passenger, or kill a jaywalking dog?
Or what about two passengers vs one jaywalker?
Here’s a homeless man and a criminal that is about to plow into a jaywalking doctor and another jaywalking guy.
It can get pretty nuanced, like this decision of who is more valuable…
…but also a lot of them are super dumb. Like here, where you either stay on the path you are on and kill two kids, a dog, and a homeless man, or you swerve just to kill an extra dog
Anyway it is really interesting and at the end it will give you a summary of how you chose (prefering to protect passengers over pedestrians, young vs old, etc.) and the choices change each time you take it so your results might change drastically each time.
Anyway the real meat and potatoes is the “Design Your Own” feature. This gives you the ability to create your own moral choice, and I guess it gets added to the game maybe? I’m not sure.
Here is a classic case of cats vs dogs
or cats vs jaywalking ladies
Or a killing bunch of babies vs injuring a poor sweet widdle puppy dog
“GTA V Multiplayer Scenario” by @Harrison
And another by @Harrison
Post your results (or not), and make some of your own. Maybe I’ll even send a hat out if I like it enough.
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Sadly, I can only claim credit for the title “GTA V Multiplayer Scenario,” not for the scenario itself.
So far they decisions have been pretty easy. Death to those who flaunt the rules!
The hardest one so far is Male Athlete/Large Male or Female Athlete/Large Female. Oh well, there’s more sperms than eggs, so dead males it is.
Here are my first go results: http://moralmachine.mit.edu/results/1467782924
I fubbed one though because I thought clicking on the image would bring up the details.
The thing is, a passenger is more likely to survive hitting something assuming they’re not going super fast. (since they have a car with safety features built around them) These scenarios seem to take place on urban streets where the top speed limit is probably 40-45mph. Hit the brakes and crash the car into the inanimate object. If there are pedestrians that close to the road, you probably were going too fast in the first place if you can’t stop in time.
@medz the point isn’t to assume these scenarios are realistic, it’s to say what’s more important assuming that an impact with soft bodies will kill them and an impact with hard bodies will kill all occupants. Realistically, these scenarios are not going to surface often.
My general rule of thumb was that if the car had to swerve into other people to save someone else’s life, that’s a big no no - I see that as choosing to kill someone.
I also value human life more than animal life.
The whole looking up someone’s criminal background and making a decision based on that is a little out there for me too…
Fun experiment and thought process!
@luvche21
But imagine that it’s not you making the choice, but the autonomous vehicle. This makes the choice more about real value (animal vs. human; old vs. young) or what is more socially acceptable (criminal vs. child). In either case, the automobile manufacturer ends up getting in trouble.
My first thought would be who the hell put a concrete carrier in the middle of a goddamn intersection? And why hasn’t someone removed it before someone gets killed??
@Bingo True. Its hard to suspend disbelief enough to try to think about it unemotionally after the first couple simply because of how contrived the examples are.