When the Ethics Meets the Road - How Should Cars Decide?

This symposium -- a public event that is part of the Symbolic Systems Program's 30th Anniversary Celebration weekend -- will bring together four thinkers and doers whose work relates to the ethics of driverless cars. This new technology brings robotic and software engineering into contact with life-or-death decisions on highways and streets. Should cars risk one person's life in order to save a greater number of people? Should traffic decisions factor in all of the ethical issues that could inform them when massive data are available, e.g., a doctor needing to go faster than the speed limit to maximize the chances of saving a patient; yielding to a driver with a known history of reckless driving; or failing to swerve in order to avoid a pedestrian who throws himself onto a freeway, because swerving would endanger others? Should a driverless car prioritize the life of its occupants over others? Should it make decisions that would be unnatural for humans but that would lead to better consequences overall?

Panel:

Joshua Greene
Psychology Department, Harvard University

Stefan Heck ('92)
Nauto

Clayton Kunz ('95)
Automotive Robotics Engineer and Researcher

Wendy Ju
Mechanical Engineering Department

Moderator:

Joshua Cohen
Apple University

Room 105