Page - (000081) - in Autonomes Fahren - Technische, rechtliche und gesellschaftliche Aspekte

P. Lin ( ) California Polytechnic State University, Philosophy Department, USA palin@calpoly.edu 4Why Ethics Matters for Autonomous Cars 1BUSJDL -JO Content 4.1 Why ethics matters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70 4.1.1 Beyond crash-avoidance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 4.1.2 Crash-optimization means targeting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72 4.1.3 Beyond harm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 4.2 Scenarios that implicate ethics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 4.2.1 The deer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74 4.2.2 Self-sacrifice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 4.2.3 Ducking harm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 4.2.4 Trolley problems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78 4.3 Next steps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 4.3.1 Broader ethical issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 4.3.2 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 If motor vehicles are to be truly autonomous and able to operate responsibly on our roads, they will need to replicate – or do better than – the human decision-making process. But some decisions are more than just a mechanical application of traffic laws and plotting a safe path. They seem to require a sense of ethics, and this is a notoriously difficult capabil- ity to reduce into algorithms for a computer to follow. This chapter will explain why ethics matters for autonomous road vehicles, looking at the most urgent area of their programming. Nearly all of this work is still in front of the M. Maurer et al. (Hrsg.), Autonomes Fahren, DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-45854-9_4, © The Editors and the Authors 2015.