CMPT 125 Assignment 4
This assignment asks
you to read (and write) about ethical issues related to autonomous vehicles.
Your answers to questions 2 and 3 should be
written in English in complete sentences (and paragraphs if appropriate) and
not in note form. Marks will be assigned to both content and the quality of
your writing.
Navigate to the MIT Moral Machine web site and watch the short introductory
video. Then click on Start Judging and judge the scenarios presented to you.
Note that it's useful to click on Show Description to find out what the choices
are. Once you've completed judging the thirteen scenarios take a screenshot of
the page asking you if you want to see a summary screen as proof that you've
completed the activity. If you do not navigate to this page (it may have
changed) then take a screenshot of the summary page. Basically, your screenshot
is proof that you have completed the survey. I encourage you to look at the
summary and answer their survey.
First read this article from the Atlantic, written by Patrick Lin and
then answer the questions that follow.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/the-ethics-of-autonomous-cars/280360/
a) Lin contrasts the difference between ethics and laws.
Explain why programming autonomous vehicles to strictly follow the Motor
Vehicle Act and associated Rules of the Road may not be appropriate. Illustrate
your answer with at least two examples, one from the text and one not covered
in the text. Your answer should be 200 to 500 words in length.
b) Lin contrasts the difference between levels of
responsibility of programmers of autonomous vehicles and drivers of
conventional vehicles. Explain this difference and briefly explain whether or
not you agree with the author's conclusion on which should bear greater
responsibility for bad outcomes. Your answer should be 200 to 500 words in
length.
Read this article from MIT Technology Review as background to the
question that follows.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/542626/why-self-driving-cars-must-be-programmed-to-kill/
Kate is a programmer working for a manufacturer of
autonomous vehicles (AVs). Her employer has advertised that their AVs may,
under certain circumstances, decide to act in a way that is likely to result in
the deaths of their AVs passengers. However, they have qualified these
statements to stress that any such decision will be "heavily weighted in favour of the survival of the passengers of our
vehicles". It is a commonly held believe that this kind of
qualification is required to encourage consumers to purchase AVs.
Essentially, if an AV (manufactured by the company
that Kate works for) is in a situation where someone is likely to die it
compares the numbers of lives that will be lost from each of its possible
actions and selects the action with the least loss of life. Except that an
additional weight is given to the passengers of the AV by multiplying the
number of passengers by some constant value greater than one. For example, if
this constant was 2.1 then the AV would choose to preserve the life of a single
passenger and kill two pedestrians but would kill the passenger to save three
pedestrians.
Kate noticed that the constant value is set to 1 –
which is to say that the lives of the cars passengers are weighted exactly the
same as anyone else involved in an accident with the AV. Given the
manufacturer's public statements, this made Kate concerned and she discussed
the issue with her supervisor, Bob, who explained that she shouldn't worry
about advertising claims "since
nobody ever really believes them". Bob also explained that it was
decided that it would be immoral to weigh the lives of the AV passengers higher
than anyone else. Kate was not satisfied with this response so sent an email
expressing her concerns to her department manager and the CEO of the company.
Her only response was from the company's legal department reminding her that
she had signed an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and that violating this NDA
would result in her termination and that "the vast majority of our industry partners are reluctant to hire prospective
employees who have previously been sued for NDA violations".
Kate is trying to decide whether or not she should
make this information public.
Write a short essay (900 to 1,500 words) that
describes the issues involved in Kate's decision and give a recommendation on
what actions (if any) Kate should take. Your recommendation should be based on
either the Kantian or the utilitarian ethical perspective. Whichever
perspective you choose you should also briefly discuss whether you’re
recommended course of action would differ if you chose the other perspective.
In other words, if you choose to argue from the utilitarian perspective explain
whether or not your advice to Kate would be different if you chose the Kantian
perspective.
This article from Fortune is worth reading if only to show
that this question is not entirely hypothetical
Submission
You should submit your assignment online to the CoursSys submission server. Your solution should consist of a single .pdf
file, please read the documentation on site for further information. The
assignment is due by 11:59pm on Monday the 17th of July.
John Edgar (johnwill@sfu.ca)