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What’s right and what’s wrong in a world where machines drive us

19th January 2018

By: Irma Venter

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

     

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A vehicle travels at speed around a bend on a hillside. Several children run onto the road. The options available to the driver are to hit the children, or to drive off the cliffside.

Would the driver make a decision of self-preservation, or self-sacrifice?

What if that decision has to be made by a machine? And what if it was a self-driving vehicle with its occupants not paying attention to the road? What should the vehicle’s programmed course of action be?

This is one specific conundrum cited in a first-of-its-kind report published in Germany earlier this year. Faced with the takeoff of automated driving in Europe within the next three to five years, an Ethics Commission of Automated Driving has developed guidelines for the programming of automated driving systems.

Automated and connected driving is regarded as one of the first applications of human-machine interaction to affect society as a whole.

The German report is not destined to sit on a shelf, gathering dust. German Federal Minister of Transport and Digital Infrastructure Alexander Dobrindt has presented the report to Cabinet, which has adopted an action plan to implement its findings.

The body of 14 experts who compiled the report was headed by a former federal constitutional court judge. Included were executives from German car manufacturers, a university criminal law professor, a university chair of business ethics, the chairperson of German consumer organisations and an auxiliary bishop.

The commission sat down from September 2016, thrashing out what the moral framework should be when a machine does the driving, and not a person.

NOT NEW
The shift from human-controlled actions to technology systems is not a new phenomenon.

The debate around the advantages and disadvantages of introducing new technology systems was also prevalent in the early twentieth century, in the form of the electronically controlled lift.

The introduction of an electronic version of the lift not only meant the loss of jobs initially, but also gave rise to a fear of system failures.

Today, the electronic lift, despite the occasional malfunction, is one of the safest and most intensively used means of mass transport in the world, posits the commission.

“An example such as this, which would appear to be marginal, shows just how much scepticism towards autonomous driving should be expected – and considered normal. Nor should it be dismissed as naive criticism of technology.”

The commission’s report comprises 20 propositions on automated driving.

The key narrative is that automated driving should significantly enhance road safety. It should also provide mobility for those currently excluded, such as the disabled or the elderly.

However, admits the commission’s report, given the level of nonconnected traffic and the reality of a heterogenous society, “it will not be possible to prevent accidents completely”.

Another proposition is that damage to property should be preferred over personal injury, or injuries to highly developed animals. However, in hazardous situations, the protection of human life has priority over animals.

In the event of an unavoidable accident situation, any distinction by the automated vehicle between individuals based on personal features, such as race, age, gender, physical or mental abilities, is not allowed.

Provided that these rigorous conditions are met, general programming to reduce the number of personal injuries could be justifiable, notes the commission.

DEALING WITH DILEMMAS
Germany’s Ethics Commission of Automated Driving acknowledges that using machines to replace the intricate human decision-making process – normally guided by moral and legal consequences – is not quite as simple and straightforward as it might appear.

The most difficult question the commission had to deal with appears to be dilemma situations, such as the one outlined in the introduction of this article – a choice between two evils.

The commission notes that there is no single correct answer to dilemma situations.

“Technological systems must be designed to avoid accidents,” states the commission’s report. “However, they cannot be standardised to a complex or intuitive assessment of the impacts of an accident in such a way that they can replace or anticipate the decision of a responsible driver with the moral capacity to make correct judgements.

“It is true that a human driver would be acting unlawfully if he killed a person in an emergency to save the lives of one or more other persons, but he would not necessarily be acting culpably.

“Such legal judgements, made in retrospect and taking special circumstances into account, cannot readily be transformed . . . into corresponding [vehicle] programming activities.”

This is the reason the commission recommended that an independent German public-sector agency (such as a Federal Bureau for the Investigation of Accidents Involving Automated Transport Systems, or a Federal Office for Safety in Automated and Connected Transport) systematically process the lessons learned on the road to automated driving.

The German government has responded by noting that the examination of dilemma- accident scenarios will continue in greater depth. It adds that the “conditions for the monitoring of the process by a public-sector institution will be created”.

It also notes that no person should be forced to use automated vehicles.

CARMAKERS RESPONSIBLE
The ethics commission’s report suggests a rather significant shift in terms of vehicle responsibility.

It notes that the public sector is responsible for guaranteeing the safety of the automated and connected systems introduced and licensed in the public street environment, which means that these driving systems need official licensing and monitoring.

The biggest shift, however, is probably in the responsibility of vehicle manufacturers.

“In the case of automated and connected driving systems, the accountability that was previously the sole preserve of the individual shifts from the motorist to the manufacturers and operators of the technological systems and to the bodies responsible for taking infrastructure, policy and legal decisions,” states the report.

“Liability for damage caused by activated automated driving systems is governed by the same principles as in other product liability.”

Parties potentially responsible for incidents in the automated driving universe include drivers, vehicle manufacturers, components suppliers, road infrastructure suppliers, traffic controllers, communication network operators and information technology suppliers.

The commission notes, however, that it must be possible to clearly distinguish whether a driverless system was being used, or whether a driver retained accountability.

The distribution of responsibilities (and, thus, of accountability) should be documented and stored, recommends the commission. This applies especially to the human-to-technology handover procedures.

The commission also suggests that the proper use of automated systems form part of people’s general digital education, with the proper handling of automated driving systems taught and tested in an appropriate manner during driving tuition.

DATA IS SACRED
The commission does not foresee that vehicle manufacturers or other parties will have unfettered access to the massive amount of data generated by autonomous vehicles.

The commission states that vehicle users have the right to decide whether the vehicle data generated are to be forwarded and used by any interested parties.

The commission also states that it cannot be ruled out that the development of automated driving is “inextricably linked with the idea and concept of centralised vehicle control and the capture of all vehicles”.

The question now arises as to the improper use of such centralised power structures, as automated and connected driving could result in the total surveillance of all road users.

In the case of centralised traffic control, it has to be assumed that the freedom of the individual to move freely from point A to point B without being detected or observed could be sacrificed to digital transport infrastructure based on efficiency, notes the commission.

However, this would mean that autonomous driving would be at the expense of autonomous everyday action.

The commission argues that the gains made in convenience and road safety by autonomous driving could not justify the loss of freedom and autonomy.

Therefore, one of the suggestions made by the commission is that vehicles should, on delivery, already have privacy-friendly factory settings that suppress the collection, processing and use of data that are not relevant to vehicle safety, until the driver enables these processes.

The premise here must be that users take a decision of their own volition on the use of their data.

SELF-LEARNING
When various software programmes are used, a distinction has to be made between learning and self-learning systems, states the commission’s report.

Learning systems are trained during development. Self-learning systems continuously update their knowledge base while in operation.

At present, not only learning systems (for instance, object identification algorithms), but also self-learning systems (for instance, adaptation of vehicle dynamics to drivers), are in use.

This means that the knowledge bases of individual vehicles could potentially differ as automated vehicle operation increases.

The commission argues that, as long as there is insufficient certainty that self- learning systems can correctly appraise situations and/or comply with safety requirements, the deployment of self- learning systems is only conceivable in functions that are not directly safety- relevant.

However, deployment could be possible where these systems could, for instance, analyse the driver’s personal driving mode – such as driving slower or faster – and adapt to it.

NO UNIVERSAL MODELS
Despite the considerable work done by the German Ethics Commission on Automated and Connected Driving, the feeling remains that some more ground needs to be covered, especially considering the global picture.

In its response to the commission’s work, the German federal government notes that work on the international standardisation of automated and connected systems will be continued on the basis of “the ethical guidelines available, in order to enable and progress safe, cross-border use of automated technology”.

One focus will be the development of uniform parameters at international level.

However, will it be truly possible to develop such international standards? Countries and people do not all have the same moral convictions and priorities.

Will and must a self-driving vehicle supplied in Germany operate in the same manner if supplied to China, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, the US or North Korea? Should the specific religious, social or constitutional frameworks of a country determine the manner in which automated vehicles are programmed to operate?

However, consider, for example, societies where individual rights are secondary to collective rights, or societies where gender and racial inequalities persist. Would such countries share’s Germany’s ethical concerns? Should they be forced to accept another country’s ethical principles?

What could this mean for bilateral vehicle trade? Will vehicle manufacturers, for instance, refrain from exporting to countries where similar standards of equality do not exist?

These are all questions to which perhaps only time and the further development of automated driving hold the answers.

Edited by Creamer Media Reporter

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