More and more driverless cars are going for road tests as laws are being made and amended. The veil of the future has been broken; we are living in the era where roads will soon be dominated by vehicles with the mind of their own. Although the idea seems appealing, and it is, the questions associated with it cannot be warded off. This technology is completely going to change the world we know. The driverless cars must abide by the law, ethics and policies. Practically, they often do confront with each other on moral grounds, but those scenarios are not so difficult, as our hands-off-the-steering vehicles are going to make them.
Let’s start off with the most classical scientific problem that completely speaks heart of the critics in this regard.
The Trolley Problem
It is a classical dilemma, forwarded by philosophers, Philippa Foot and Judith Jarvis Thomson, that didn’t find any ideal resolution till date. Here is the scene; imagine a trolley is broken lose and is about to run over five innocent people standing in its way. As an immediate hero to save the day you stand close to a switch that can direct the train to another track towards a shunt (roadblock or end of the rail), but at the end of the shunt there is another person unaware of the situation. What would you do? Switch the track to save five people, jeopardizing life of one man or let it go and allow the train to hit five people crossing the track? Lives of people are on the line, the only choice you have is to save one or more. Unfortunately, it does not have an exact answer to be correct on the moral grounds, even the best is not the perfect one.
Now let’s apply the case in our soon-to-be cars, say that they have already inhabited the urban roads. An autonomous car is racing towards its destination on a single lane, metres apart there are three people standing on the sidewalk. As the car approaches near them, suddenly a girl jumps in front of it. What will the artificial intelligence decide, hit the girl or the people? Human beings have a highly evolved emotional chemistry that enables them to make complex choices and take situations on their lives to protect the ones they love. We know of examples where drivers in an attempt to save innocent lives (even animals) steered themselves to an ill-fated path. Will the mind of a machine ever understand the meanings of sacrifice? We never had to solve this paradox until now, but with the advent of intelligent driverless cars it becomes inevitable.
The Law
For a self-driving car to cruise the roads, it has to go through a set of rules enforced by traffic authorities. Currently, we can infer they would be legal in the United States first. On a simple principle, “everything is permitted unless prohibited,” which dictates “Let them drive and prosper.”
The Question arises here, how can the book of law deal with something that is not registered in it? Decisions will be made with or without a sufficient legal framework, but like other innovations this will too suffer a biased verdict, owing to the incomplete human understanding how the machine world works.
We should also ask ourselves, if everything would depend on the road tests, which seems to be the case if you have been paying attention to the news updates. Would they be enough to share our roads with robotic cars? Critics insist that simple road tests won’t do! Because, the real traffic is not about following the rules, it is about making the right decision at the right time. Not every driver on roads abides by the speed limits and road signs. Even with the power of billions of cells in our brains and years of experience, accidents do happen. So, driverless cars should meet those unforeseen events and demonstrate their road judgment in grave situations. The automakers approach this problem by providing the manual mode. Nevertheless, even if these cars become super-intelligent, future prediction is another case.
There is no denying that accidents are a possibility, so who will be responsible in case of loss of life or property; the car or the owner? By virtue of law, somebody or something has to be punished for mistakes or pay the fine for it. Let’s say, there will be a punishment, how would that meet up if it’s a government owned property like a fire-brigade truck, trash-carrier or president’s own car?
The Future of Driverless Cars
The world will eventually yield to technology, but it will take a hard lift-off. The nascent machine intelligence is riding the roads with countless problems, but with a good intention. It will make errors, it will evolve and it will be perfected. We are looking at possibilities. What you have read above is just a trailer and we are just scratching the surface.