Abstract
The ethical discussion on automated vehicles (AVs) has for the most part focused on what morality requires in AV collisions which present moral dilemmas. This discussion has been challenged for its failure to address the various kinds of risk and uncertainty which we can expect to arise in AV collisions; and for overlooking certain morally relevant facts which are unique to the context of AVs. We take these criticisms as a starting point and outline four perspectives on what matters for the ethics of AVs: risk and uncertainty, value sensitive design, partiality towards passengers and meaningful human control.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
This work is part of the research project Meaningful Human Control over Automated Driving Systems with project number MVI.16.044, which is (partly) financed by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO).
References
Leben, D.: A Rawlsian algorithm for autonomous vehicles. Ethics Inf. Technol. 19(2), 107–115 (2017)
de Sio, F.S.: Killing by autonomous vehicles and the legal doctrine of necessity. Ethical Theor. Moral Pract. 20(2), 411–429 (2017)
Contissa, G., Lagioia, F., Sartor, G.: The ethical knob: ethically-customisable automated vehicles and the law. Artif. Intell. Law 25(3), 365–378 (2017)
Keeling, G.: Legal necessity, pareto efficiency and justified killing in autonomous vehicle collisions. Ethical Theor. Moral Pract. 21(2), 413–427 (2018)
Keeling, G.: Against Leben’s Rawlsian collision algorithm for autonomous vehicles. In: Müller, V. (eds.) Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence (PT-AI 2017). Studies in Applied Philosophy, Epistemology and Rational Ethics, vol. 44. Springer, Cham (2017)
Bonnefon, J., Shariff, A., Rahwan, I.: The social dilemma of autonomous vehicles. Science 365(6293), 1573–1576 (2016)
Himmelreich, J.: Never mind the trolley: The ethics of autonomous vehicles in mundane situations. Ethical Theor. Moral Pract. 21(3), 669–684 (2018)
Hevelke, A., Nida-Rümelin, J.: Responsibility for crashes of autonomous vehicles: an ethical analysis. Sci. Eng. Ethics 21(3), 619–630 (2015)
Goodall, N.: Away from trolley problems and towards risk-management. Appl. Artif. Intell. 30(8), 810–821 (2016)
Nyholm, S., Smids, J.: The ethics of accident-algorithms for self-driving cars: an applied trolley problem? Ethical Theor. Moral Pract. 19(5), 1275–1289 (2016)
Goodall, N.: Ethical decision making during automated vehicle crashes. Transp. Res. Rec. 2424(1), 58–65 (2014)
Goodall, N.: Machine ethics and automated vehicles. In: Meyer, G., Beiker, S. (eds.) Road Vehicle Automation. Lecture Notes in Mobility. Springer, Cham (2014)
Friedman, B., Kahn Jr., P.H.: Human values, ethics, and design. In: Jacko, J.A., Sears, A. (eds.) The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook, pp. 1177–1201. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Mahwah (2003)
Friedman, B., Kahn Jr., P.H., Borning, A.: Value sensitive design and information systems. In: Zhang, P., Galletta, D. (eds.) Human-Computer Interaction and Management Information Systems, vol. 5, pp. 348–372. M.E. Sharpe, Armonk, NY (2006)
Kochenderfer, M.J.: Decision Making Under Uncertainty: Theory and Application. MIT Press, Cambridge (2015)
Thornton, S.M.: Autonomous vehicle motion planning with ethical considerations. PhD thesis. Stanford University (2018)
Morris, D.Z.: Mercedes-Benz’s self-driving cars would choose passenger lives over bystanders. Fortune (2016). http://fortune.com/2016/10/15/mercedes-self-driving-car-ethics/
Ogienr, R.: L’éthique aujourd’hui. Maximalistes et minimalistes, pp. 144–152. Gallimard, Paris (2015)
Millar, J.: Technology as a moral proxy: autonomy and paternalism by design. IEEE Technol. Soc. Mag. 34(2), 47–55 (2015)
Brooks, R.: The seven deadly sins of AI predictions. MIT Technol. Rev. (2017). https://www.technologyreview.com/s/609048/the-seven-deadly-sins-of-ai-predictions/. Accessed 17 Jan 2019
Selman, B., Brooks, R., Dean, T., Horvitz, E., Mitchell, T., Nilsson, N.: Challenge problems for artificial intelligence. In: Proceedings of AAAI-96, Thirteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 1340–1345 (1996)
van Gerven, M.: Computational foundations of natural intelligence. Front. Comput. Neurosci. 11, 112 (2017)
Matthias, A.: The responsibility gap: ascribing responsibility for the actions of learning automata. Ethics Inf. Technol. 6(3), 175–183 (2004)
Di Nucci, E., de Sio, F.S.: Drones and responsibility: mapping the field. Routledge (2016)
Horowitz, M.C., Scharre, P.: Meaningful Human Control in Weapons Systems: A Primer (2015)
Nyholm, S.: Attributing agency to automated systems: reflections on human-robot collaborations and responsibility-loci. Sci. Eng. Ethics 24(4), 1201–1219 (2018)
de Sio, F.S., van den Hoven, J.: Meaningful human control over autonomous systems: a philosophical account. Front. Robot. AI 5, 15 (2018)
Scharre, P.: Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War. W. W. Norton, New York (2018)
Moyes, R.: Key Elements of Meaningful Human Control. Article 36 (2016)
Schwarz, E.: The (im)possibility of Meaningful Human Control for Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (2018). https://blogs.icrc.org/law-and-policy/2018/08/29/im-possibility-meaningful-human-control-lethal-autonomous-weapon-systems/
Mittelstadt, B.D., Allo, P., Taddeo, M., Wachter, S., Floridi, L.: The ethics of algorithms: mapping the debate. Big Data Soc. 3(2), 1–21 (2016)
Bennett, S.: A brief history of automatic control. IEEE Control Syst. Soc. 16, 17–25 (1996)
Flemisch, F.O., Adams, C.A., Conway, S.R., Goodrich, K.H., Palmer, M.T., Schutte, P.C.: The H-Metaphor as a Guideline for Vehicle Automation and Interaction, January 2003
Michon, J.A.: Human Behavior and Traffic Safety. Springer, Boston (1985)
Calvert, S.C., Mecacci, G., Heikoop, D.D., de Sio, F.S.: Full platoon control in truck platooning: a meaningful human control perspective. In: 21st International Conference on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITSC), pp. 3320–3326 (2018)
Mecacci, G., de Sio, F.S.: Meaningful Human Control, Practical Reasoning and Dual-Mode Vehicles (2019, under review)
Heikoop, D., Hagenzieker, M., Mecacci, G., Calvert, S., de Sio, F.S., van Arem, B.: Human behaviour with automated driving systems: a quantitative framework for meaningful human control (2018, under review)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2019 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Keeling, G., Evans, K., Thornton, S.M., Mecacci, G., Santoni de Sio, F. (2019). Four Perspectives on What Matters for the Ethics of Automated Vehicles. In: Meyer, G., Beiker, S. (eds) Road Vehicle Automation 6. AVS 2018. Lecture Notes in Mobility. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22933-7_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-22933-7_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-22932-0
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-22933-7
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)