[LINK] Robot cars and the fear gap
Karl Auer
kauer at biplane.com.au
Thu Jul 14 14:06:32 AEST 2016
On Thu, 2016-07-14 at 13:50 +1000, Brendan wrote:
> Yes. It's effectively the trolley problem. Do you throw a fat person
> in the way of a runaway trolley in order to save 5 other people?
What the hell has fatness got to do with it?
The trolley problem as I understand it has a person at a switch. A
runaway train (trolley) is coming down the track. The switch is set so
that if nothing is done, the trolley will kill five people standing on
the track. If the switch position is changed, the trolley will kill
only one person standing on the other track. Should the person at the
switch change the setting? Would you, if you were the person at the
switch?
No requirement for "fatness".
It's a clever way of assigning agency and responsibility where none
really exists. It also assumes that people are like apples, one much
the same as the other.
You can play with all the unfairnesses in the question by doing things
like specifying that all five on one track are one family, that the one
person on the other track is the mother of five children, that the five
on one track are criminals on death row (or terminally ill people, or
children, or whatever) and so on. The calculus is fatally flawed; the
only right answer is "it's a stupid question".
The fallacy in the argument as it applies to autonomous vehicles is
that autonomous vehicles don't see "people" and cannot weigh outcomes
with any subtlety at all. You can't ask "what should the vehicle do in
this situation" and then load the situation with value judgements. The
result is - a stupid question.
Regards, K.
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Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
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