Autonomous Vehicle Ethics

"A runaway trolley is speeding down a track" So begins what is perhaps the most fecund thought experiment of the past several decades since its invention by Philippa Foot. Since then, moral philosophers have applied the "trolley problem" as a thought experiment to study many different ethical conflicts - and chief among them is the programming of autonomous vehicles. Nowadays, however, very few philosophers accept that the trolley problem is a perfect analogy for driverless cars or that the situations autonomous vehicles face will resemble the forced choice of the unlucky bystander in the original thought experiment.
This book represents a substantial and purposeful effort to move the academic discussion beyond the trolley problem to the broader ethical, legal, and social implications that autonomous vehicles present. There are still urgent questions waiting to be addressed, for example: how AVs might interact with human drivers in mixed or "hybrid" traffic environments; how AVs might reshape our urban landscapes; what unique security or privacy concerns are raised by AVs as connected devices in the "Internet of Things"; how the benefits and burdens of this new technology, including mobility, traffic congestion, and pollution, will be distributed throughout society; and more.
An attempt to map the landscape of these next-generation questions and to suggest preliminary answers, this volume draws on the disciplines of philosophy, sociology, economics, urban planning and transportation engineering, business ethics and more, and represents a global range of perspectives.

Dr. Ryan Jenkins is an Associate Professor of Philosophy, a Senior Fellow at the Ethics + Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, and a former Co-Chair of the Robot Ethics Technical Committee of the IEEE. He studies the ethics of emerging technologies, especially artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, and driverless cars. He has served on two NSF grants to study the ethical, legal, and social implications of autonomous vehicles. He has published extensively in academic journals and his work has appeared in public fora including the Washington Post, Slate, and Forbes. Dr. David Cerný is a research fellow at the Institute of State and Law of the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Computer Science of the Czech Academy of Sciences. He is a founding member of the Karel Capek Center for Values in Science and Technology. His research interests range from normative to applied ethics, primarily focusing on artificial intelligence, robotics, and medical ethics. He has served on two Technology Agency of the Czech Republic grants to investigate the ethical implications of autonomous vehicles and end-of-life decisions. He also served as an expert at the European Commission. Czech media often interview him on issues related to applied ethics, and his work has appeared in public fora. Dr. Tomás Hríbek is a research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences. Together with David Cerný, he is the founder of the Karel Capek Center for Values in Science and Technology. He has published on topics ranging from philosophy of mind and science, to ethics (particularly bioethics, and more recently the ethics of emerging technologies) and aesthetics. He also teaches at several colleges, including Charles University and Anglo-American University, in his hometown of Prague.

Acknowledgments Contributors Introduction PART I Autonomous Vehicles and Trolley Problems Introduction by David Cerný Chapter 1. Ethics and Risk Distribution for Autonomous Vehicles Nicholas G. Evans Chapter 2. Autonomous Vehicles, the Badness of Death, and Discrimination David Cerný Chapter 3. Automated Vehicles and the Ethics of Classification Geoff Keeling Chapter 4. Trolleys and Autonomous Vehicles: New Foundations for the Ethics of Machine Learning Jeff Behrends and John Basl Chapter 5. The Trolley Problem and the Ethics of Autonomous Vehicles in the Eyes of the Public: Experimental Evidence Akira Inoue, Kazumi Shimizu, Daisuke Udagawa, and Yoshiki Wakamatsu Chapter 6. Autonomous Vehicles in Drivers' School: A Non- Western Perspective Soraj Hongladarom and Daniel D. Novotný Chapter 7. Autonomous Vehicles and Normative Pluralism Saul Smilansky Chapter 8. Discrimination in Algorithmic Trolley Problems Derek Leben PART II Ethical Issues Beyond the Trolley Problem Introduction by Ryan Jenkins Chapter 9. Unintended Externalities of Highly Automated Vehicles Jeffrey K. Gurney Chapter 10. The Politics of Self- Driving Cars: Soft Ethics, Hard Law, Big Business, Social Norms Ugo Pagallo Chapter 11. Autonomous Vehicles and Ethical Settings: Who Should Decide? Paul Formosa Chapter 12. Algorithms of Life and Death: A Utilitarian Approach to the Ethics of Self- Driving Cars Stephen Bennett Chapter 13. Autonomous Vehicles, Business Ethics, and Risk Distribution in Hybrid Traffic Brian Berkey Chapter 14. An Epistemic Approach to Cultivating Appropriate Trust in Autonomous Vehicles Kendra Chilson Chapter 15. How Soon Is Now?: On the Timing and Conditions for Adopting Widespread Use of Autonomous Vehicles Leonard Kahn Chapter 16. The Ethics of Abuse and Unintended Consequences for Autonomous Vehicles Keith Abney PART III Perspectives from Political Philosophy Introduction by Tomá Hríbek Chapter 17. Distributive Justice, Institutionalism, and Autonomous Vehicles Patrick Taylor Smith Chapter 18. Autonomous Vehicles and the Basic Structure of Society Veljko Dubljevic and William A. Bauer Chapter 19. Supply Chains, Work Alternatives, and Autonomous Vehicles Luke Golemon, Fritz Allhoff, and T. J. Broy Chapter 20. Can Autonomous Cars Deliver Equity? Anne Brown Chapter 21. Making Autonomous Vehicle Technologies Matter: Ensuring Equitable Access and Opportunity Madhu C. Dutta- Koehler and Jennifer Hatch Part IV Autonomous Vehicle Technology in The City Introduction by TomáS Hríbek Chapter 22. Fixing Congestion for Whom? The Distribution of Autonomous Vehicles' Effects on Congestion Carole Turley Voulgaris Chapter 23. Fulfilling the Promise of Autonomous Vehicles with a New Ethics of Transportation Beaudry Kock and Yolanda Lannquist Chapter 24. Ethics, Autonomous Vehicles, and the Future City Jason Borenstein, John Bucher, and Joseph Herkert Chapter 25. The Autonomous Vehicle in Asian Cities: Opportunities for Gender Equity, Convivial Urban Relations, and Public Safety in Seoul and Singapore Jeffrey K. H. Chan and Jiwon Shim Chapter 26. Autonomous Vehicles, the Driverless City, and the Pedestrian City TomáS Hríbek Appendix 1: Varieties of Trolley Pessimism Jeff Behrends and John Basl