Disanalogical Discourse on Trolley Problem for Autonomous Vehicles

This podcast discusses a paper that argues that the trolley problem, a widely discussed philosophical thought experiment used to explore ethical dilemmas, is a poor analogy for the ethical issues raised by the programming of autonomous vehicles. The authors highlight three key areas of disanalogy: the nature of the decision-making process, the role of moral and legal responsibility, and the inherent uncertainty associated with real-world scenarios. They contend that the trolley problem's focus on abstract, hypothetical situations with clear-cut outcomes fails to account for the complex, nuanced, and often uncertain realities of designing collision-algorithms for autonomous vehicles. The authors suggest that Care Ethics, which prioritizes context and individual relationships, might be a more suitable ethical framework for addressing the unique challenges posed by autonomous vehicles in real-world traffic. Reference Mukhopadhyay, Mayukh and Ghosh, Kaushik and Chakraborty, Abhisita and Goswami, Malay, Disanalogical Discourse on Trolley Problem for Autonomous Vehicles (March 10, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3563378 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3563378