A future filled with self-driving cars offers a host of benefits, including fewer greenhouse gas emissions and increased traffic efficiency, but MIT's 'Moral Machine' is a tool that addresses one of the darker aspects of proliferating autonomous vehicles. The browser tool poses scenarios in which a self-driving vehicle must choose between colliding with a barrier and killing its passenger or swerving from the barrier and killing pedestrians.
The Moral Machine is effectively a crowdsourced version of the classic "trolley problem" from philosophy, which, when boiled down to its basic tenet, asks whether it is better to cause death by acting or cause death by doing nothing. Though the trolley problem was purely theoretical, self-driving cars create the potential for a real-world instantiation of the dilemma.
Though the Moral Machine's data may never actually be put to use in self-driving cars, it nonetheless is a look into Internet users' moral codes.
Moral-Testing Online Games
The 'Moral Machine' Records User Opinions on Self-Driving Car Scenarios
Trend Themes
1. Crowdsourced Morality - The Moral Machine serves as a prime example of how crowdsourcing can be used to gather opinions on complex moral dilemmas for various industries.
2. Ethics in Technology - The proliferation of self-driving cars raises ethical questions that need to be addressed, creating opportunities for the development of new technologies and systems that prioritize morality and safety.
3. Moral Algorithm Development - The existence of tools like the Moral Machine highlights the need for the creation of algorithms that can make ethical decisions, presenting opportunities for innovation in artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Industry Implications
1. Automotive - The automotive industry can explore the integration of moral decision-making algorithms in self-driving cars, ensuring that vehicles prioritize the safety and well-being of passengers and pedestrians.
2. Technology - The technology industry can develop and implement ethical frameworks and algorithms to address the moral complexities introduced by emerging technologies like self-driving cars.
3. Crowdsourcing - The crowdsourcing industry has the opportunity to provide platforms and tools that allow individuals to engage in discussions and contribute to ethical decision-making processes in various domains.