Self-driving cars don't care about your moral dilemmas
Would it be better to hit a granny or swerve to hit a toddler? It seems like a dilemma, but the designers of self-driving cars say otherwise
As self-driving cars move from fiction to reality, a philosophical problem has become the focus of fierce debate among technologists across the world. But to the people actually making self driving cars, it's kind of boring.
The "trolley problem" is the name for a philosophical thought experiment created as an introduction to the moral distinction between action and inaction. The classic example is a runaway mine cart, hurtling down tracks towards a group of five oblivious people. With no time to warn them, your only option is to pull a switch and divert the cart on to a different track, which only has one person standing on it. You will save five lives, but at the cost of actively killing one person. What do you do?
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