NIGHTMARE SCENARIO: You’re driving down the road when a child darts out in front of you. There’s no room to brake, but as you start to swerve you see the jogger in the other lane. No way around it, either the child or the jogger will die. There’s no time to think, only to act… what do you do?
It’s the classic Trolley Problem, but here’s a twist… imagine that instead of you being the driver, you’re the passenger in a self-driving car that encounters the same situation. What does it do? What should it do? What do other people think it should do?
This interactive simulation from MIT makes you the AI behind the wheel of a self-driving car, and someone’s going to die… who will it be? Find out how you’d make split-second, life-and-death decisions if you have the time to reflect, then compare your answers with the millions of others from around the globe. And then dig deeper into the moral dilemmas of self-driving cars…
Click here to try the MIT Media Lab’s Moral Machine interactive
Digging deeper…
How should autonomous vehicles be programmed? Massive global survey reveals ethics preferences and regional differences, Peter Dizikes at MIT Media Lab, Oct 2018
Your (future) car’s moral compass, by Edmond Awad on MIT Media Lab, Feb 2019
Self-driving cars will have to decide who should live and who should die. Here’s who humans would kill. Carolyn Johnson in Washington Post, Oct 2018
Self-driving car dilemmas reveal that moral choices are not universal, Amy Maxmen in Nature, Oct 2018
