Moral Dilemmas for Moral Machines

TL;DR

This paper critiques the use of trolley-style moral dilemmas in autonomous vehicle ethics, arguing they are misapplied and proposing more appropriate uses that can inform both machine ethics and philosophy.

Contribution

It challenges the common application of philosophical moral dilemmas in machine ethics and suggests better ways to utilize these dilemmas in autonomous systems.

Findings

Misapplication of trolley problems in autonomous vehicle ethics

Potential catastrophic consequences of current practices

Novel machine-learning scenarios can inform philosophical ethics

Abstract

Autonomous systems are being developed and deployed in situations that may require some degree of ethical decision-making ability. As a result, research in machine ethics has proliferated in recent years. This work has included using moral dilemmas as validation mechanisms for implementing decision-making algorithms in ethically-loaded situations. Using trolley-style problems in the context of autonomous vehicles as a case study, I argue (1) that this is a misapplication of philosophical thought experiments because (2) it fails to appreciate the purpose of moral dilemmas, and (3) this has potentially catastrophic consequences; however, (4) there are uses of moral dilemmas in machine ethics that are appropriate and the novel situations that arise in a machine-learning context can shed some light on philosophical work in ethics.