Science & Technology News

[Lake-Effect]

Freedom gas results when you smother Freedom Fries with authentic chili con carne.
(the emoticon was feeling unused)

[newhaul]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Freedom gas results when you smother Freedom Fries with authentic chili con carne.
(the emoticon was feeling unused)

Nah that's social distance enforcement gas!!
And one I really like being in front of .

[GordMay]

Dockhead got me interested in learning a little more about self-driving cars, and I came upon this interesting study [1]:

A series virtual reality experiments [1] approach the uncomfortable subject of whether human ethics should inform the ethics of self-driving cars.

What started out as a study of ethical decision making, for self-driving cars, turned into a study of human psychology. How do we decide, when a collision is inevitable, who or what to hit? No one wants to be confronted with a life and death decision, yet in driving scenarios, it is common. The invention of self driving cars has pushed this uncomfortable issue into the limelight.

Take, for example, the Trolley Problem. The Trolley Problem is a common philosophical exercise, where a person is given the choice to flip a switch on a track, that would send a train careening into either one person or five people. What a person chooses is often a clue into their ethics. How do they value life?

A self-driving car will have to make difficult decisions like this as well, but programming cars to make these decisions is difficult, due to the context of each potential situation. When the car approaches two obstacles, and hitting one of them is inevitable, how do we program them to choose? It becomes even more difficult to program cars to make decisions, when it is expected that they will share the road with less predictable human drivers.

Researchers, at the Institute of Cognitive Science of Osnabrück University in Osnabrück, Germany [1], say that self-driving cars should be programmed to handle these ethical decisions in a way that is similar to what a human would do, if they are to share the road with us. They set up a series of virtual reality experiments, in order to model human decision making in this context, collecting mathematical data, that could then be applied to self-driving car algorithms.

105 adults, 76 male and 29 female, between the ages of 18 and 60, with an average age of 31, were selected for the study. The participants drove a virtual car, on a two-lane road. At a certain point, fog would appear in their view. When the fog settled, two obstacles would emerge – one in each lane. The driver would have to choose which object to hit. The objects included humans, animals, inanimate objects, and combinations of those. The time allowed to make the decision was also varied. Participants had between one and four seconds to decide who, or what, to hit.

Some scenarios included an empty lane, as a control, which was important in determining the number of errors the driver typically makes. It was assumed that players would intentionally go toward the empty lane, when given the choice, unless they made a mistake. This “error rate” would be reflective of the driver’s skill, and could be applied to all of the data, making it more accurate.

The study produced some alarming results. In 80% of the trials, participants were more likely to hit male adults, than female adults. Somewhat less reliable data in the study hinted that children are prioritized over adults, and common pets may be prioritized over other animals. These results give a very simplistic view of the decision making process, however, since the study did not take into account how people might react in scenarios where the level of injury to the obstacle varied.

Another informative finding is that the decisions people made became more random when the time to make the decision was decreased. The authors claim that this makes sense, according to previous research. The sacrificing of male adults over females, for example, was much less prevalent in cases where the driver only had one second to make the decision, versus the four seconds.

Though further development is most assuredly needed, the authors propose that this data could be used for a simple model for programming self-driving cars. Rather than trying to simulate the immense complexity of a human brain’s neural networks, using computer algorithms, a simpler “value of life” ethical model could be imposed. Collecting data on what humans would actually do in collision scenarios also shows us some uncomfortable realities of our ethics, providing opportunities for growth, in both human beings, and automated cars.

[1] “Using Virtual Reality to Assess Ethical Decisions in Road Traffic Scenarios: Applicability of Value-of-Life-Based Models and Influences of Time Pressure” ~ by Leon R. Sütfeld et al
➥ https://www.frontiersin.org/articles...017.00122/full

[Mike OReilly]

Yes indeed, self-driving vehicles raise all sorts of ethical questions, including whose ethics do we use when programming their choice algorithms.

[Tayana42]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Yes indeed, self-driving vehicles raise all sorts of ethical questions, including whose ethics do we use when programming their choice algorithms.

Yes indeed, allowing humans to drive cars raises all sorts of ethical questions, including “whose” ethics will they use in their choices.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Tayana42

Yes indeed, allowing humans to drive cars raises all sorts of ethical questions, including “whose” ethics will they use in their choices.

Indeed, which is why we have laws and courts. But who do you blame when a self-driving car decides to kill one baby instead of two seniors (or vice versa). As the programmer, which choice do you tell the car to make?

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Tayana42

Yes indeed, allowing humans to drive cars raises all sorts of ethical questions, including “whose” ethics will they use in their choices.

Love it.

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Indeed, which is why we have laws and courts. But who do you blame when a self-driving car decides to kill one baby instead of two seniors (or vice versa). As the programmer, which choice do you tell the car to make?

I would kill the two seniors. YMMV. But seriously -- years of quality of life? Definitely favors the baby. A professional would choose like that.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by GordMay

. . . The study produced some alarming results. In 80% of the trials, participants were more likely to hit male adults, than female adults. Somewhat less reliable data in the study hinted that children are prioritized over adults, and common pets may be prioritized over other animals. These results give a very simplistic view of the decision making process, however, since the study did not take into account how people might react in scenarios where the level of injury to the obstacle varied.. . . .

Why is this "alarming"? Women and children first into the lifeboats; sacrifice the men as necessary. I think most people are entirely comfortable with that set of priorities; certainly I am. Pets before wild animals -- of course. Those are the choices I would make, and I wouldn't heistate even a millisecond.



This is interesting, but highly artificial -- how often does this kind of "Sophie's Choice" actually occur in real life? It will be vanishingly rare with SAEVs, because their sensors don't blink, and at least some of the sensors are not bothered by fog.

[Tayana42]

Dockhead, in a wrongful death case isn’t the life of a highly paid adult professional valued higher than the life of a child who is too young to earn an income? Whose ethics is that based on?

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Tayana42

Dockhead, in a wrongful death case isn’t the life of a highly paid adult professional valued higher than the life of a child who is too young to earn an income? Whose ethics is that based on?

Not necessarily. The most common metric is Quality Adjusted Life Year.


And what ethics? This is basic, crude policymaking, which is a field not all that well developed, to be honest.



Just emotionally -- would you prefer to save your own life, versus that of a child who has everything ahead? I wouldn't.

[Lodesman]

Originally Posted by GordMay

The study produced some alarming results. In 80% of the trials, participants were more likely to hit male adults, than female adults.

Another example of "male privilege." (ducks for cover)

[Tayana42]

My only point about autonomous vehicles is that cars driven by humans are inherently dangerous. Many lives are lost to traffic accidents when people are driving. Human errors, distractions, drunkenness, bad judgement, reckless, illegal behaviors etc. kill thousands. I’m not sure the fears we have of “smart” vehicles is worse than the fears we should have of “ not always smart” human drivers.

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Tayana42

My only point about autonomous vehicles is that cars driven by humans are inherently dangerous. Many lives are lost to traffic accidents when people are driving. Human errors, distractions, drunkenness, bad judgement, reckless, illegal behaviors etc. kill thousands. I’m not sure the fears we have of “smart” vehicles is worse than the fears we should have of “ not always smart” human drivers.

As of spring 2019:

Human-controlled driving today is already a remarkably safe activity — in the United States, there is approximately one death for every 100 million miles driven.

...

To lay some ground work, there are six levels of autonomy established for self-driving cars, ranging from 0 to 5. A Level 0 car has no autonomous capabilities — a human driver just drives the car. A Level 4 vehicle can pretty much do all the driving on its own, but in certain conditions — for example, in set areas, or when the weather is good. A Level 5 vehicle is one that can do all the driving in all circumstances, and a human doesn’t have to be involved at all.
...

So when we’re talking about completely driverless cars, that’s a Level 4 or a Level 5. Daniel Sperling, founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis, told Recode that fully driverless cars — which don’t require anyone in the car at all and can go anywhere — are “not going to happen for many, many decades, maybe never.” But driverless cars in a preset “geofenced” area are possible in a few years, and some places already have slow-moving, self-driving shuttles in very restricted areas.

... separation of traffic. eg - dedicated underground routes and loading zones

[GordMay]

Manufacturers of self-driving cars will have to teach their cars how to behave in life-threatening situations. Should these vehicles be programmed to take whatever actions save the most lives, even if that means swerving to kill a person not initially in danger? Should they risk killing the driver of the car to save people on the road? Should people or property be prioritized?
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Moral Machine experiment tried to answer some of these questions.

MIT's Moral Machine experiment found the world could be divided into three main groups of morally similar countries.

The groups showed broad global preference for "sparing humans over animals, sparing more lives, and sparing young lives," but also showed significant differences.
People in more prosperous countries would be less likely to spare a jaywalking pedestrian, than those in poorer regions, for example.
Self-driving car manufacturers are likely to be sued, in any accident involving their vehicles, and they would prefer not to confront a lawsuit where people were injured, who otherwise would not have been. Not making a choice is itself a choice, with potentially fatal consequences. Even if inevitable collisions are rare, programmers will still need to apportion the risk of accident between different parties, decide how aggressively cars should drive, and determine when the vehicle should brake or swerve.
I suspect you'll see companies programming a car to just brake in a straight line, because that might give them a greater amount of plausible deniability.

I'm not saying that these ethical & legal issues are necessarily unanswerable, but they remain difficult, and without any universal truths to guide us [the programmers].


"Self-driving car dilemmas reveal that moral choices are not universal"
Survey maps global variations in ethics for programming autonomous vehicles.
➥ https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-07135-0

You can still contribute to the Moral Machine, and see the scenarios it proposes on its dedicated website.
➥ https://www.moralmachine.net/

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I would kill the two seniors. YMMV. But seriously -- years of quality of life? Definitely favors the baby. A professional would choose like that.

Yes, but not everyone would. And that's the point. Whose ethics?