Artificial intelligence is already making decisions in the fields of business, health care and manufacturing. But AI algorithms generally still get help from people applying checks and making the final call.<\/p>\n
What would happen if AI<\/a> systems had to make independent decisions, and ones that could mean life or death for humans?<\/p>\n Pop culture has long portrayed our general distrust of AI. In the 2004 sci-fi movie I, Robot<\/em>, detective Del Spooner (played by Will Smith) is suspicious of robots after being rescued by one from a car crash, while a 12-year-old girl was left to drown. He says<\/a>:<\/p>\n I was the logical choice. It calculated that I had a 45% chance of survival. Sarah only had an 11% chance. That was somebody\u2019s baby \u2013 11% is more than enough. A human being would\u2019ve known that.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. #MSInspire<\/a>pic.twitter.com\/A4FkpBOBYa<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Richard Hay (@WinObs) July 17, 2019<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Unlike humans, robots lack a moral conscience and follow the \u201cethics\u201d programmed into them. At the same time, human morality is highly variable. The \u201cright\u201d thing to do in any situation will depend on who you ask.<\/p>\n For machines to help us to their full potential, we need to make sure they behave ethically<\/a>. So the question becomes: how do the ethics of AI developers and engineers influence the decisions made by AI?<\/p>\n Imagine a future with self-driving cars that are fully autonomous. If everything works as intended, the morning commute will be an opportunity to prepare for the day\u2019s meetings, catch up on news, or sit back and relax.<\/p>\n But what if things go wrong? The car approaches a traffic light, but suddenly the brakes fail and the computer has to make a split-second decision. It can swerve into a nearby pole and kill the passenger, or keep going and kill the pedestrian ahead.<\/p>\n The computer controlling the car will only have access to limited information collected through car sensors, and will have to make a decision based on this. As dramatic as this may seem, we\u2019re only a few years away from potentially facing such dilemmas.<\/p>\n Autonomous cars will generally provide safer driving, but accidents will be inevitable \u2013 especially in the foreseeable future, when these cars will be sharing the roads with human drivers and other road users.<\/p>\n Tesla does not yet produce<\/a> fully autonomous cars, although it plans to. In collision situations, Tesla cars don\u2019t automatically operate or deactivate the Automatic Emergency Braking (AEB) system if a human driver is in control.<\/p>\n In other words, the driver\u2019s actions are not disrupted \u2013 even if they themselves are causing the collision. Instead, if the car detects a potential collision<\/a>, it sends alerts to the driver to take action.<\/p>\n In \u201cautopilot\u201d mode, however, the car should automatically brake for pedestrians. Some argue if the car can prevent a collision, then there is a moral obligation for it to override the driver\u2019s actions in every scenario. But would we want an autonomous car to make this decision?<\/p>\n\n
\n
The self-driving future<\/h2>\n