Who should your autonomous car save?

Azim Shariff, assistant professor of psychology and social behavior at UC Irvine, discusses some of the moral issues surrounding self-driving cars.

Vocabulary: autonomous car, artificial intelligence, morality, psychology, social behavior

Next Generation Science Standards: ETS2.A: Interdependence of Science, Engineering, and Technology and ETS1.A: Defining and Delimiting an Engineering Problem. Can be used to build towards HS-ETS1–3.

Common Core State Standards: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.2, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.7.2, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.8.2, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.9–10.2, CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11–12.2

A futuristic traffic circle, from Shutterstock

Autonomous cars promise a long list of benefits, including safer driving (cars don’t drink or text); convenience (forget looking for parking); and flexibility (disabled, blind, or elderly citizens wouldn’t have to rely on other drivers). However, they’d put taxi drivers, truckers, and others who drive for a living out of work. And a new study suggests people aren’t psychologically ready for autonomous vehicles, either — especially for ones that might be programmed to sacrifice their passengers’ lives to avoid an even greater casualty toll among pedestrians. Azim Shariff, an assistant professor of psychology and social behavior at UC Irvine, is one of the authors of a recent study in the journal Science about some of the moral issues surrounding the topic of autonomous vehicles, such as how people feel about letting their cars decide who lives or dies in an accident.

Audio Excerpt “Psychology of Self-Driving Cars,” Jun 24, 2017. (Original Segment)

Print this segment transcript.

Questions

• What is an autonomous vehicle?
• Create a chart where you map the benefits and drawbacks of autonomous vehicles. Use your chart to craft a response to the statement “autonomous cars will do more harm than good.”
• Azim Shariff talks about the challenge of autonomous car adoption. What do you think will dissuade people from buying and using autonomous vehicles?
• Do you think that the challenges and risks of autonomous cars should be addressed with an industry-wide standard or by individual car and transportation companies? Explain your reasoning.
• Do you think ambulances should be autonomous? Why or why not?

An Uber autonomous vehicle on a test drive. By Dllu (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Activity Suggestions

• Autonomous vehicle programmers are grappling with the classic “trolley problem” and so can your students! Learn more about it in this video and have students discuss each of the scenarios. You can also use this video to look at the collaboration between social behaviorists, like Azim Shariff, and programmers to address different scenarios that might confront self-driving cars.
• What is the best approach for engineering robots with morality? Using this debate and writing activity, introduce your students to the Quixote program, which aims to use stories to teach morality to robots. Then have students debate the merits of robots who learn for themselves versus given directives.

Additional Resources

• We are waiting on autonomous vehicles, but car manufacturers already have connected cars on the road.
• Would you be on board with a self-driving ambulance?
• Self-driving trucks are now running on a route from Texas to California.