Ethics of Automonuous vehicles

The idea of autonomous vehicles is exciting but comes with big challenges and ethical issues that need to be addressed. While they will come with greater efficiency and convenience, as well as the hope of reduced number of crashes, it also raises questions about safety, fairness and accountability. They must operate without bias or discrimination and comply with the legal frameworks that are currently in place. These ethical principles have been outlined in BSI 8611: Ethics of Robots and Robotic Devices which emphasises safety, transparency and accountability and the Law Society’s consultation on autonomous vehicles which highlights the need for clear liability frameworks.

Autonomous vehicles raise difficult questions. How should the autonomous vehicle prioritise lives in an unavoidable accident? Who decides the framework for ethical decision making? Should it be the car manufacturers, governments? Who is responsible for a crash? How do we ensure that their decision making do not reflect societal biases? These are just some of the questions and issues that needs to be solved.

Team India understands these challenges when it comes to autonomous vehicles and is committed to solving them the best way we can. If there is any flaw in the design which would mean that the autonomous vehicle would put a pedestrian in danger it is our job as members of the IET to raise these concerns and get them fixed. As future engineers, we understand that these ethical considerations will become more prominent as we progress in our careers and tackle more complex projects.

Ethical Issues:

Safety: The vehicle must always protect people’s lives. If an accident is unavoidable, how should the vehicle decide what to do? 

Transparency: People need to trust the vehicle, we need to make sure the vehicle’s decisions are clear and easy to understand.

Privacy: Autonomous vehicles collect a lot of data, we need to keep this data safe and private.

Fairness: The vehicle’s decisions must be fair and not biased against anyone.

Recommendations

Here’s what we should do to address these issues:

Build Ethics into Design: Make sure the vehicle’s decisions match what people think is right. Create a team to check the ethics of our design.

Be Transparent: Explain how the vehicle makes decisions. Share reports to help people trust the vehicle.

Protect Privacy: Use strong security to keep user data safe and follow privacy laws.

Work with Regulators: Talk to governments and help make rules for autonomous vehicles. 

Test for Safety and Fairness: Test the vehicle a lot to make sure it’s safe. Check for biases and fix them if necessary. 

Check Liability: Work with lawyers to figure out who is responsible if something goes wrong.