Summary Of Here's A Terrible Idea By Patrick Lin

The article “Here’s A Terrible Idea: Robot Cars With Adjustable Ethics Settings” by Patrick Lin, immediately grabbed my attention because it placed the theory of ethics into the 21st century. The infamous “trolley problem” is the prime example that Lin uses to discuss the moral dilemma presented by robotic cars. After reading and discussing Lin’s article, I agree that robotic cars with adjustable ethics settings are a terrible idea.
One of the first topics that stood out to me was that 12% of people would want the manufacturer to predetermine the ethical standard programmed into their vehicle. Do these people realize the gravity of making a decision on an ethical standard and therefore don’t want to be held accountable? Perhaps their educational knowledge on the ethical standard is too minimal for them to make a clear decision. For the people that wanted to set their own ethical standard, they have to understand the entire scope of implications given different circumstances because they have to make sure they will be able to live with their decisions.
What about changing the setting?
If a decision on an ethical standard is made, people have a tendency of making an exception for themselves in certain circumstances. How quickly could one change the setting on the car? Let’s look at the “trolley problem” where the dilemma is to hit five people or one. Say the current ethical setting will result in hitting the one person in order to save the five and the driver evaluates the situation and realizes that they know the person that is by himself/herself. Would the driver have time to change the ethical setting to one where the result would be hitting the five strangers as opposed to hitting the one person they
know?
What about changing how serious the car takes the ethical standard into account? If utilitarianism is the set ethical standard, then by definition the best course of action is the one that maximizes utility or happiness. Again, let’s say that the driver evaluates the collision before it is going to occur, would the car be able to sense that the driver recognized the one person? If the scope of the utilitarianism set standard is to maximize the driver’s happiness, the car would maybe take the path with the five people, assuming that the driver would be less affected by killing five random people as opposed to the one person they know. On the other hand, if the scope of the utilitarianism set standard is to maximize the overall happiness, then the car would probable choose the path of killing the one person instead of the five. With this outcome, less people have been killed and therefore less people have been negatively affected, right?
What if the five people all happened to be single and had no family left? Suppose the one person has a big family, children, and plenty of friends, what then? Would the car setting be able to take these things into account? In this situation, maybe the car would rather take the path with the five people because they wouldn’t be missed as much as the one person. Less people would suffer over the death of the five than the death of the one; therefore, this decision has maximized overall happiness.
One might disagree with my thoughts or think that my examples are too extreme. The author of this article used very extreme examples as well. I believe that the examples have to be extreme; they have to be black and white for someone to even get close to making the right ethical decision. Unfortunately, this is not how life works. Life is not black and white; it is full of gray scales. This makes it hard to follow an ethical standard wholeheartedly; consequently, I believe this is the reason people make exceptions for themselves. In conclusion, programming a vehicle with an ethical standard is a terrible idea.