Prompt:
After reading some of the articles above, address the following questions:
- What is the motivation for developing and building self-driving cars? What are the arguments for and against self-driving cars? Would they make our roads safer?
- How should programmers address the “social dilemma of autonomous vehicles”? How should an artificial intelligence approach life-and-death situations? Who is liable for when an accident happens?
- What do you believe will be the social, economic, and political impact of self-driving cars? What role should the government play in regulating self-driving cars?
- Would you want a self-driving car? Explain why or why not.
Response:
There are a number of important motivations for developing self-driving cars: lower carbon emissions, reduce the number of deaths caused by car accidents, and improve traffic flow. According to Reuters’ report on the matter, “The U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a 2014 study that U.S. traffic crashes cost society $836 billion a year in economic loss, with human error behind 94 percent of crashes.” Self-driving cars could fix these dangers. The government is even getting involved in the push for self-driving cars as the House approved a proposal to deploy more self-driving cars without human controls.
However, there is still some debate over whether self-driving cars will actually make roads safer. I think self-driving cars will definitely be safer, reducing the number of crashes significantly, when they are the only type of cars on the road. While we are in this in-between having both types of cars on the roads, I do not think they will help much. I come to this conclusion for two reasons. First, the algorithm self-driving cars must use while there are human cars on the road is a lot more complicated and likely to have bugs. Second, self-driving cars lack human intuition. As Sam Anthony, CTO and cofounder of Perceptive Automata, writes, “If self-driving cars are going to achieve their promise as a revolution in urban transportation—delivering reduced emissions, better mobility, and safer streets—they will have to exist on a level playing field with the humans who already use those roads.” The problem lies in the fact that automated cars do not act in the same way as human drivers and pedestrians and therefore may not maneuver in the way those humans expect. This can cause serious accidents if we do not program self-driving cars to be ready for all types of unanticipated human actions.
One issue these readings really drew my attention to was the “social dilemma of autonomous vehicles.” I have always been concerned with the number of jobs eliminated by self-driving cars. “When autonomous vehicle saturation peaks, U.S. drivers could see job losses at a rate of 25,000 a month, or 300,000 a year”, according to a report from Goldman Sachs Economics Research. Beyond job loss, I had not thought much more about the social impact autonomous cars could have. Because of the NY Times article, “Full Tilt: When 100% of cars are autonomous,” I have started to imagine a world with driverless cars. We would not need traffic lights or road signs. “Robots, after all, won’t need signs to optimize the way they move through urban landscapes.” Intersections would be so efficient that it may make rides sick or nervous before they get used to it. There would be fewer parking lots. Our whole landscape would look different. I do not know whether this would be good or bad. Our world would be less cluttered but would it be more or less beautiful? This remains up for debate. But I imagine that in my lifetime I will know the answer through experience.
Ethical and Professional Issues 