Summary Of Here's A Terrible Idea

“Here’s a Terrible Idea: Robot Cars with Adjustable Ethics Settings” Response Paper
In this article, Patrick Lin discusses the ethical questions that arise from adding ethics settings to automated cars, comparing them to the train dilemma of killing one person versus five. The author concludes with the statement that no one knows what the solution is because there’s no right answer. Who should be to blame for unavoidable deaths based on ethics settings? Which level of ethics is to blame: the technical, the professional, or the social?
Starting at the technical level, the question becomes should the engineer have designed the technology that allows discrimination in deadly situations? The ethical question of the design should’ve come to their attention early in the design process. Ethics settings create the possibility of …show more content…
Society hardly ever reaches a consensus on issues that have no clear answer, such as politics and economics. The evidence the author presents shows that they don’t agree on the questions of automated cars either. If no consensus can be reached, it would be illogical for society to decide on any ethics settings. Letting each user decide wouldn’t be the answer either because it would be too subjective. While these moral decisions certainly affect society and people have a right to voice their opinions, these decisions should not be made by society. While the technical and societal levels of ethics have important voices in debates about any ethic features in automated cars, the responsibility should belong to the professional level. However, in order to prevent them from attempting to reduce liability by giving control to individual users, legislation should be put in place to protect them. As the author stated, there’s no perfect solution, but until better choices are offered, this seems to be best