One of the most talked about limitations of autonomous vehicles is the issue of “if this, then that,” a thought experiment based on the “trolley problem,” a hypothetical situation in which participants must choose between allowing a runaway train to kill five people or diverting the train to kill one person who wouldn’t otherwise die. If an AI car is driving and encounters a situation in which it must decide to hit either a group of joggers or a child, what might it decide?

Last year, MIT researchers designed a Moral Machine, which asked visitors to answer moral questions regarding just such scenarios. People were asked to determine who the car should kill. The Moral Machine collected 18 million votes from 1.3 million people, and the research is now being explored in the context of autonomous vehicles.  Read more...

Reference: Electronic Products
                   Heather Hamilton