Seite - (000093) - in Autonomes Fahren - Technische, rechtliche und gesellschaftliche Aspekte

814.3 Next steps away, alert the police, remain at the crime scene to preserve evidence, or maybe defend itself? For a future suite of in-car apps, as well as sensors and persistent GPS/tracking, can we safeguard personal information, or do we resign ourselves to a world with disappearing privacy rights [27]? To the extent that online services bring online advertising, we could see new, insidious advertising schemes that may allow third-party advertisers to have some influence on the autonomous car’s route selection, e.g., steering the car past their businesses [32]. What kinds of abuse might we see with autonomous cars? If the cars drive too conser- vatively, they may become a traffic hazard or trigger road-rage in human drivers with less patience [26, 42]. If the crash-avoidance system of a robot car is generally known, then other drivers may be tempted to “game” it, e. g., by cutting in front of it, knowing that the automated car will slow down or swerve to avoid an accident. If those cars can safely drive us home in a fully-auto mode, that may encourage a culture of more alcohol consumption, since we won’t need to worry so much about drunk-driving. More distant concerns include: How will law-abiding robot cars affect city revenue, which often depends on traffic fines imposed against law-breaking human drivers? Inas- much as many organ transplants come from car-accident victims, how will society manage a declining and already insufficient supply of donated organs [41]? Older-model autonomous cars may be unable to communicate with later models or future road infrastructure. How do we get those legacy models – which may be less safe, in addition to incompatible with newer technology – off the roads [45]? Since 2009, Microsoft has been trying to kill off its Windows XP operating system [39], a much less expensive investment than an autonomous car; but many users still refuse to relinquish it, including for critical military systems [37, 46]. This is a great security risk since Microsoft will no longer offer software patches for the operating system. 4.3.2 Conclusions We don’t really know what our robot-car future will look like, but we can already see that much work needs to be done. Part of the problem is our lack of imagination. Technology policy expert Peter W. Singer observed, “We are still at the ‘horseless carriage’ stage of this technology, describing these technologies as what they are not, rather than wrestling with what they truly are” [43]. As it applies here, robots aren’t merely replacing human drivers, just as human drivers in the first automobiles weren’t simply replacing horses: that would like mistaking electric- ity as merely a replacement for candles. The impact of automating transportation will change society in radical ways, and technology seems to be accelerating. As Singer puts it, “Yes, Moore’s Law is operative, but so is Murphy’s Law” [43]. When technology goes wrong – and it will – thinking in advance about ethical design and policies can help guide us responsibility into the unknown.