TECH

Self-Driving Cars Could Make Moral Decisions Like

Humans With a Simple Algorithm
GEMMA CONROY 6 JULY 2017

Self-driving cars are almost here, but one big question remains - how do they
make hard choices in a life and death situation? Now researchers have
demonstrated that smart vehicles are capable of making ethical decisions on
the road, just like we do everyday.

Nissan Philippines
Dare The Impossible.
Move through life with greater
confidence and excitement with Nissan.
nissan.ph

OPEN

By studying human behaviour in a series of virtual reality-based trials, the

team were able to describe moral decision making in the form of an
algorithm. This is huge because previously, researchers have assumed that
modelling complex ethical choices is out of reach.
"But we found quite the opposite," says Leon Sütfeld, one of the researchers
from the University of Osnabruck, Germany. "Human behaviour in dilemma
situations can be modelled by a rather simple value-of-life-based model that is
attributed by the participant to every human, animal, or inanimate object."

If you take a quick glance at the statistics, humans can be pretty terrible
drivers that are often prone to distraction, road rage and drink driving. It's no
surprise then that there are almost 1.3 million deaths on the road worldwide
each year, with 93 percent of accidents in the US caused by human error.

But is kicking back in the seat of a self-driving car really a safer option? The
outlook is promising. One report estimates that driverless vehicles could
reduce the number of road deaths by 90 percent, which works out to be
around 300,000 saved lives a decade in the US alone.

Despite the glowing gures, developing a self-driving car that can respond to
unpredictable situations on the road hasn't been a smooth ride. One
stumbling block is guring out how these smart cars will deal with road
dilemmas that require ethical decision-making and moral judgement.

While previous research has shown that self-driving cars can avoid accidents

by driving slow at all times or switching to a di erent driving style, following a
set of programmed 'rules' isn't enough to survive the demands of inner city
tra c.

And then there's the 'trolley dilemma', a thought experiment that tests how
we make moral decisions. In this no-win scenario, a trolley is headed towards
ve unsuspecting bystanders. The only way to save these ve people is by
pulling a lever that diverts the trolley onto another track where it kills one
person instead. How can a driverless car make the best choice?

The tricky thing with these kinds of decisions is that we tend to make a choice
based on the context of the situation, which is di cult to mirror in the form of
an algorithm programmed into a machine.

With this in mind, Sütfeld and the team took a closer look at whether
modelling human behaviour when driving is as impossible as everyone thinks
it is.

Using virtual reality to simulate a foggy road in a suburban setting, the team
placed a group of participants in the driver's seat in a car on a two-lane road.
A variety of paired obstacles, such as humans, animals and objects, appeared
on the virtual road. In each scenario, the participants were forced to decide
which obstacle to save and which to run over.

Next, the researchers used these results to test three di erent models
predicting decision making. The rst predicted that moral decisions could be
explained by a simple value-of-life model, a statistical term measuring the
bene ts of preventing a death.

The second model assumed that the characteristics of each obstacle, such as
the age of a person, played a role in the decision making process. Lastly, the
third model predicted that the participants were less likely to make an ethical
choice when they had to respond quickly.

After comparing the results of the analysis, the team found the rst model
most accurately described the ethical choices of the participants. This means
that self-driving cars and other automated machines can make human-like
moral choices using a relatively simple algorithm.

But before you throw away your driver's license, it's important to remember
that these ndings open up a whole new realm of ethical and moral debate
that need to be considered before self-driving cars are out on the road.

"Now that we know how to implement human ethical decisions into machines
we, as a society, are still left with a double dilemma," says Peter Konig, one of
the researchers on the study "Firstly, we have to decide whether moral values
should be included in guidelines for machine behaviour, and if they are,
should machines act just like humans?"

While we still have a way to go before we take our hands o the steering
wheel for good, these ndings are a big leap forward in the world of intelligent
machines.

The research was published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience.