Autonomous Vehicles

Reprint of a chapter first appearing in African Values, Ethics, and Technology: Questions, Issues, and Approaches (2021).

This book offers a systematic and thorough philosophical analysis of the ways in which driving automation crosses path with ethical values. Upon introducing the different forms of driving automation and examining their relation to human autonomy, it provides readers with in-depth reflections on safety, privacy, moral judgment, control, responsibility, sustainability, and other ethical issues. Driving is undoubtedly a moral activity as a human act. Transferring it to artificial agents such as connected and automated vehicles necessarily raises many philosophical questions. When (...) driving is automated, what happens to its ethical dimensions? Could artificial agents accomplish ethical objectives on our behalf, take moral decisions in our place, and drive us into a more ethical transportation future? In doing so, would they be “moral” as we are or in a way that is similar to, but also remarkably different from, our own? And what role is yet to be played by human responsibility and commitment? The book addresses these questions with the aim of stimulating an interdisciplinary dialogue between different stakeholders. They include automotive engineers, computer scientists, and moral philosophers, as well as industry representatives, policymakers, regulators, transportation experts, and the general public. Indeed, connected and automated vehicles will not take the high road for us . We must drive them there. (shrink)

Discussion of the ethics of driverless cars has often focused on supposed real-life versions of the famous trolley problem. In these cases, a driverless car is in a position where crashing is unavoidable and all possible crashes risk harm: for example, it can either continue on its current path and crash into five pedestrians or swerve and crash into one pedestrian. There are significant disanalogies between the human versions of the trolley problem and situations faced by driverless cars which affect (...) the application and moral significance of key deontological distinctions, such as the distinction between doing and allowing harm. The application and moral significance of the doing/allowing distinction in the context of the behaviour of driverless cars depend on (a) our conception of the behaviour of driverless cars; (b) the forms of driverless cars that are developed and used; (c) the background expectations of programmers/manufacturers/owners of driverless cars and the conditions of being able to put those cars on the roads. These are as yet unsettled – and may even be undetermined. Nonetheless, trolley problems may still be useful in thinking about the ethics of driverless cars. (shrink)

This paper presents a new trilemma with respect to resolving the control and alignment problems in machine ethics. Section 1 outlines three possible types of artificial moral agents (AMAs): (1) 'Inhuman AMAs' programmed to learn or execute moral rules or principles without understanding them in anything like the way that we do; (2) 'Better-Human AMAs' programmed to learn, execute, and understand moral rules or principles somewhat like we do, but correcting for various sources of human moral error; and (3) 'Human-Like (...) AMAs' programmed to understand and apply moral values in broadly the same way that we do, with a human-like moral psychology. Sections 2–4 then argue that each type of AMA generates unique control and alignment problems that have not been fully appreciated. Section 2 argues that Inhuman AMAs are likely to behave in inhumane ways that pose serious existential risks. Section 3 then contends that Better-Human AMAs run a serious risk of magnifying some sources of human moral error by reducing or eliminating others. Section 4 then argues that Human-Like AMAs would not only likely reproduce human moral failures, but also plausibly be highly intelligent, conscious beings with interests and wills of their own who should therefore be entitled to similar moral rights and freedoms as us. This generates what I call the New Control Problem: ensuring that humans and Human-Like AMAs exert a morally appropriate amount of control over each other. Finally, Section 5 argues that resolving the New Control Problem would, at a minimum, plausibly require ensuring what Hume and Rawls term ‘circumstances of justice’ between humans and Human-Like AMAs. But, I argue, there are grounds for thinking this will be profoundly difficult to achieve. I thus conclude on a skeptical note. Different approaches to developing ‘safe, ethical AI’ generate subtly different control and alignment problems that we do not currently know how to adequately resolve, and which may or may not be ultimately surmountable. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that in addition to the generally accepted aim of reducing traffic-related injuries and deaths as much as possible, a principle of fairness in the distribution of risk should inform our thinking about how firms that produce autonomous vehicles ought to program them to respond in conflict situations involving human-driven vehicles. This principle, I claim, rules out programming autonomous vehicles to systematically prioritize the interests of their occupants over those of the occupants of other vehicles, including (...) human-driven vehicles. Because there is reason to think that most consumers would prefer to purchase autonomous vehicles that do systematically prioritize the interests of occupants over those of others, if my argument is correct it generates a substantial ethical restriction on firms’ efforts to gain market share in the initial stages of the introduction of autonomous vehicles onto the road. (shrink)

How should human beings and robots interact with one another? Nyholm’s answer to this question is given below in the form of a conditional: If a robot looks or behaves like an animal or a human being then we should treat them with a degree of moral consideration (p. 201). Although this is not a novel claim in the literature on ai ethics, what is new is the reason Nyholm gives to support this claim; we should treat robots that look (...) like human or non-human animals with a certain degree of moral restraint out of respect for human beings or other beings with moral status. Although Danaher or Coeckelbergh also claim that we should treat robots with a degree of moral consideration, the reasons they give for making this claim focus on duties or rights attaching to the robot themselves (see J. Danaher, “Welcoming Robots into the Moral Circle: A Defence of Ethical Behaviourism,” Science and Engineering Ethics, (2019): 1–27 or M. Coeckelbergh, “Moral Appearances: Emotions, Robots and Human Morality,” Ethics and Information Technology, 12(3) (2010): 235–241.). Nyholm disagrees with this type of reasoning and claims that until robots develop a human or animal like inner life, we have no direct duties to the robots themselves. Rather, it is out of respect for human beings or other beings with moral status that we should treat some robots with moral restraint. Gerdes, similarly inspired by Kant, focuses on the human agent to argue that we should avoid treating robots in cruel ways because this may corrupt the human agent’s character (see A. Gerdes, “The Issue of Moral Consideration in Robot Ethics,” siggas Computers and Society, 45(3) (2015): 274–279.). Nyholm’s contribution here is to extend this view such that the corruption or harm being done is against the humanity in all of us. (shrink)

Automated vehicles promise much in the way of both economic boons and increased personal safety. For better or worse, the effects of automating personal vehicles will not be felt for some time. In contrast, the effects of automated work vehicles, like semi-trucks, will be felt much sooner—within the next decade. The costs and benefits of automation will not be distributed evenly; while most of us will be positively affected by the lower prices overall, those losing their livelihoods to the automated (...) semi-trucks and other similar work vehicles will be much worse off. This sets up a classic distributive justice problem: how do we balance the harms and benefits of automation? In this paper, the authors recommend work alternatives: policies that the government would enact in order to ensure that each person could live a decent life even if one could not work, especially for reasons like having one’s job automated. After arguing for this position, we propose some policy guidelines. (shrink)

The German Act on Autonomous Driving constitutes the first national framework on level four autonomous vehicles and has received attention from policy makers, AI ethics scholars and legal experts in autonomous driving. Owing to Germany’s role as a global hub for car manufacturing, the following paper sheds light on the act’s position within the ethical discourse and how it reconfigures the balance between legislation and ethical frameworks. Specifically, in this paper, we highlight areas that need to be more worked out (...) in the future either through ethical conventions, corporate measures or legal measures and examine how the law can be incorporated into the existing discourse on the regulation of technologies. Based on this examination, we derive implications for future discourse and elaborate on companies’ responsibilities in developing autonomous driving technologies in an ethical sense. (shrink)

This extended abstract summarises some of the basic points of AI ethics and policy as they present themselves now. We explain the notion of AI, the main ethical issues in AI and the main policy aims and means.

Automated vehicles (AVs) are expected to operate on public roads, together with non-automated vehicles and other road users such as pedestrians or bicycles. Recent ethical reports and guidelines raise worries that AVs will introduce injustice or reinforce existing social inequalities in road traffic. One major injustice concern in today’s traffic is that different types of road users are exposed differently to risks of corporal harm. In the first part of the paper, we discuss the responsibility of AV developers to address (...) existing injustice concerns regarding risk exposure as well as approaches on how to fulfill the responsibility for a fairer distribution of risk. In contrast to popular approaches on the ethics of risk distribution in unavoidable accident cases, we focus on low and moderate risk situations, referred to as routine driving. For routine driving, the obligation to distribute risks fairly must be discussed in the context of risk-taking and risk-acceptance, balancing safety objectives of occupants and other road users with driving utility. In the second part of the paper, we present a typical architecture for decentralized automated driving which contains a dedicated module for real-time risk estimation and management. We examine how risk estimation modules can be adjusted and parameterized to redress some inequalities. (shrink)

In 2017, the German ethics commission for automated and connected driving released 20 ethical guidelines for autonomous vehicles. It is now up to the research and industrial sectors to enhance the development of autonomous vehicles based on such guidelines. In the current state of the art, we find studies on how ethical theories can be integrated. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no framework for motion planning has yet been published which allows for the true implementation of any practical (...) ethical policies. This paper makes four contributions: Firstly, we briefly present the state of the art based on recent works concerning unavoidable accidents of autonomous vehicles (AVs) and identify further need for research. While most of the research focuses on decision strategies in moral dilemmas or crash optimization, we aim to develop an ethical trajectory planning for all situations on public roads. Secondly, we discuss several ethical theories and argue for the adoption of the theory “ethics of risk.” Thirdly, we propose a new framework for trajectory planning, with uncertainties and an assessment of risks. In this framework, we transform ethical specifications into mathematical equations and thus create the basis for the programming of an ethical trajectory. We present a risk cost function for trajectory planning that considers minimization of the overall risk, priority for the worst-off and equal treatment of people. Finally, we build a connection between the widely discussed trolley problem and our proposed framework. (shrink)

The ethical dilemma of whether autonomous vehicles should protect the passengers or pedestrians when harm is unavoidable has been widely researched and debated. Several behavioral scientists have sought public opinion on this issue, based on the premise that EDs are critical to resolve for AV adoption. However, many scholars and industry participants have downplayed the importance of these edge cases. Policy makers also advocate a focus on higher level ethical principles rather than on a specific solution to EDs. But conspicuously (...) absent from this debate is the view of the consumers or potential adopters, who will be instrumental to the success of AVs. The current research investigated this issue both from a theoretical standpoint and through empirical research. The literature on innovation adoption and risk perception suggests that EDs will be heavily weighted by potential adopters of AVs. Two studies conducted with a broad sample of consumers verified this assertion. The results from these studies showed that people associated EDs with the highest risk and considered EDs as the most important issue to address as compared to the other technical, legal and ethical issues facing AVs. As such, EDs need to be addressed to ensure robustness in the design of AVs and to assure consumers of the safety of this promising technology. Some preliminary evidence is provided about interventions to resolve the social dilemma in EDs and about the ethical preferences of prospective early adopters of AVs. (shrink)

We address the considerations of the European Commission Expert Group on the ethics of connected and automated vehicles regarding data provision in the event of collisions. While human drivers’ appropriate post-collision behavior is clearly defined, regulations for automated driving do not provide for collision detection. We agree it is important to systematically incorporate citizens’ intuitions into the discourse on the ethics of automated vehicles. Therefore, we investigate whether people expect automated vehicles to behave like humans after an accident, even if (...) this behavior does not directly affect the consequences of the accident. We find that appropriate post-collision behavior substantially influences people’s evaluation of the underlying crash scenario. Moreover, people clearly think that automated vehicles can and should record the accident, stop at the site, and call the police. They are even willing to pay for technological features that enable post-collision behavior. Our study might begin a research program on post-collision behavior, enriching the empirically informed study of automated driving ethics that so far exclusively focuses on pre-collision behavior. (shrink)

A human driver and an automated driving system might share control of automated vehicles in the near future. This raises many concerns associated with the assignment of responsibility for negative outcomes caused by them; one is that the human driver might be required to bear the brunt of moral and legal responsibilities. The psychological consequences of responsibility misattribution have not yet been examined. We designed a hypothetical crash similar to Uber’s 2018 fatal crash. We incorporated five legal responsibility attributions. Participants (...) chose their preferred liability attribution and then were randomly assigned into one of the five actual liability attribution conditions. They then responded to a series of questions concerning liability assignment, the crash, and AVs. Slightly more than 50% of participants thought that the human driver should bear full or primary liability. Legal responsibility misattribution negatively influenced these mentioned responses, regardless of overly attributing human or manufacturer liability. Overly attributing human liability had more negative influences. Improper liability attribution might hinder the adoption of AVs. Public opinion should not be ignored in developing a legal framework for AVs. (shrink)

In this paper, we explore and describe what is needed to allow connected and automated vehicles to break traffic rules in order to minimise road safety risk and to operate with appropriate transparency. Reviewing current traffic rules with particular reference to two driving situations, we illustrate why current traffic rules are not suitable for CAVs and why making new traffic rules specifically for CAVs would be inappropriate. In defining an alternative approach to achieving safe CAV driving behaviours, we describe the (...) use of ethical goal functions as part of hybrid AI systems, suggesting that functions should be defined by governmental bodies with input from citizens and stakeholders. Ethical goal functions for CAVs would enable developers to optimise driving behaviours for safety under conditions of uncertainty whilst allowing for differentiation of products according to brand values. Such functions can differ between regions according to preferences for safety behaviours within that region and can be updated over time, responding to continual socio-technological feedback loops. We conclude that defining ethical goal functions is an urgent and necessary step from governmental bodies to enable the safe and transparent operation of CAVs and accelerate the reduction in road casualties they promise to achieve. (shrink)

The paper has two goals. The first is presenting the main results of the recent report Ethics of Connected and Automated Vehicles: recommendations on road safety, privacy, fairness, explainability and responsibility written by the Horizon 2020 European Commission Expert Group to advise on specific ethical issues raised by driverless mobility, of which the author of this paper has been member and rapporteur. The second is presenting some broader ethical and philosophical implications of these recommendations, and using these to contribute to (...) the establishment of Ethics of Transportation as an independent branch of applied ethics. The recent debate on the ethics of Connected and Automated Vehicles presents a paradox and an opportunity. The paradox is the presence of a flourishing debate on the ethics of one very specific transportation technology without ethics of transportation being in itself a well-established academic discipline. The opportunity is that now that a spotlight has been switched on the ethical dimensions of CAVs it may be easier to establish a broader debate on ethics of transportation. While the 20 recommendations of the EU report are grouped in three macro-areas: road safety, data ethics, and responsibility, in this paper they will be grouped according to eight philosophical themes: Responsible Innovation, road justice, road safety, freedom, human control, privacy, data fairness, responsibility. These are proposed as the first topics for a new ethics of transportation. (shrink)

Self-driving cars promise solutions to some of the hazards of human driving but there are important questions about the safety of these new technologies. This paper takes a qualitative social science approach to the question ‘how safe is safe enough?’ Drawing on 50 interviews with people developing and researching self-driving cars, I describe two dominant narratives of safety. The first, safety-in-numbers, sees safety as a self-evident property of the technology and offers metrics in an attempt to reassure the public. The (...) second approach, safety-by-design, starts with the challenge of safety assurance and sees the technology as intrinsically problematic. The first approach is concerned only with performance—what a self-driving system does. The second is also concerned with why systems do what they do and how they should be tested. Using insights from workshops with members of the public, I introduce a further concern that will define trustworthy self-driving cars: the intended and perceived purposes of a system. Engineers’ safety assurances will have their credibility tested in public. ‘How safe is safe enough?’ prompts further questions: ‘safe enough for what?’ and ‘safe enough for whom?’. (shrink)

The ethics of autonomous cars and automated driving have been a subject of discussion in research for a number of years :28–58, 2016). As levels of automation progress, with partially automated driving already becoming standard in new cars from a number of manufacturers, the question of ethical and legal standards becomes virulent. For exam-ple, while automated and autonomous cars, being equipped with appropriate detection sensors, processors, and intelligent mapping material, have a chance of being much safer than human-driven cars in (...) many regards, situations will arise in which accidents cannot be completely avoided. Such situations will have to be dealt with when programming the software of these vehicles. In several instances, internationally, regulations have been passed, based on legal considerations of road safety, mostly. However, to date, there have been few, if any, cases of a broader ethics code for autonomous or automated driving preceding actual regulation and being based on a broadly composed ethics committee of independent experts. In July 2016, the German Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure, Alexander Dobrindt, appointed a national ethics committee for automated and connected driving, which began its work in September 2016. In June 2017, this committee presented a code of ethics which was published in German and in English. It consists of 20 ethical guidelines. Having been a member of this committee, I will present the main ethical topics of these guidelines and the discussions that lay behind them. (shrink)