Moral Deviations of “Moral Machines” and Ethical Approaches to Autonomous Vehicles

doi:10.15936/j.cnki.1008-3758.2021.03.002

Abstract

Abstract: The rapid development of autonomous vehicles (AV) has brought the “trolley dilemma” into new discussions. Among them， MIT's “moral machines” claim the potential to figure out the moral algorithm of AV by collecting the public's moral preferences. However， this experiment does not contribute much to the ethical designs of AV， partly because of the abstract and universal way to construct the “trolley dilemma”. Also， it is difficult to deal with the non-linear， multi-factor， multi-conflict and context-sensitive moral problems by using a set of top-down deontological or utilitarian algorithm. In fact， combining bottom-up machine learning with top-down symbolic reasoning and using connectionist networks and virtue ethics to develop virtuous AV systems is considered to be more promising and fruitful in taking account of the essence of morality.

Key words: autonomous vehicle(AV); moral machine; trolley dilemma; neural network; virtue ethics

CLC Number:

N031

QIAN Yuanyuan. Moral Deviations of “Moral Machines” and Ethical Approaches to Autonomous Vehicles[J]. Journal of Northeastern University(Social Science), 2021, 23(3): 8-16.

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