Why we need more than just data to create ethical driverless cars
Why we need more than just data to create ethical driverless cars
Seth Lazar and Colin Klein
The Conversation
In response to the 'Moral Machine' research drawing lessons for the design of driverless cars from a massive survey with over 40m responses, Seth Lazar and Colin Klein argue that we need a more deliberative democratic debate to figure out how they should work. They question the evidential value of people's pre-theoretical reactions to thinly described cases, point out the inadequacy of an approach that fails to take uncertainty into account, and argue that we already have a method for resolving moral disagreement—not surveys or focus groups, but the full suite of democratic processes. In the end, if we're going to establish just and legitimate AI systems, we're going to need to build with the only tools we have ever developed to successfully handle pervasive and deep moral disagreement: democratic institutions.