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RE: Can science answer moral questions? I don't think so

in #science7 years ago

Having said that, I remember him discussing the Morality of AI more recently. His example was the driverless car that finds itself in a nearing unavoidable collision with some children. Does it's course of action save the children by swerving off the road and killing the driver or plough into the children and save the driver. I think his moral jury was out on that!

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This has been solved. In my opinion the owner of the car should decide whether to sacrifice the car to save others in the situation of an accident. I don't think the AI in specific should be enabled to self sacrifice to save others if a human is in the vehicle unless the human owner accepts the same morality.

From a utilitarian perspective where all lives are complete strangers then it's better to save more lives than less. So it becomes a mere calculation (Trolley Experiment case) where you win by saving as many lives as possible. Taking 1 life to save 5 is a bigger win than saving 1 life to lose 5.

However if that 1 life is not a stranger and those 5 lives are complete strangers, now the values of those lives is no longer equal. So in practice it's not always the case to say it's ethical to save the maximum number of people in a situation because at the end of the day human beings do not value all people equally. Human beings like or love some people.

The jury isn't out on the question of the Trolley Experiment or self driving car variety of the same experiment. The solution under utilitarianism is always calculated to save the most lives even at the lowest cost if all lives are of equal worth.

So in the real world how would that work? Maybe the car owner would sit through a morality interview with the car dealership and his preferences would define the outcome of any accident. Surely there will be future laws to govern this and it would make sense to follow the utilitarianism approach but with no exception to whether the driver has any connection to the would be lost lives.

The car could have a screen and put forth the question in the form of a video and simple ask the owner what they would like their car to do in that situation.