The June 25 edition of Le Monde raises the question of how autonomous vehicles should be programmed. "Kill pedestrians who suddenly step into the road, or sacrifice the passenger?" This is the dilemma currently facing those developing algorithms to control driverless cars. This "trolley problem" was tested through online psychological experiments. To save ten pedestrians, 75% of respondents said it would be more moral for the vehicle to sacrifice its passenger; the figure fell to 70% when the participant was driving the car and to 60% when family members were travelling with them. Only 40% of respondents said they would be inclined to buy such a car.
Mathematicians and computer scientists still have plenty of calculations ahead of them: should they take into account the age of the car's occupants, the pedestrians' age, whether or not they are using a pedestrian crossing…? You can even express your own preferences on the Moral Machine website, a platform that gathers human perspectives on moral decisions made by artificial intelligence.
