Jailbreaking Morality: The Philosophy of Self Driving Cars
https://medium.com/@nitesh_dhanjani/jailbreaking-morality-the-philosophy-of-self-driving-cars-506f822164fc
Today, the phrase “self driving cars” projects a future where cars will drive themselves. In the future, the same phrase will mean the cars of yesteryear that we had to drive ourselves.
Autonomous vehicles are computers we will put ourselves inside of, and we will depend on them to make our lives safer. These vehicles are crafted by the works of engineers, physicists, and mathematicians — indeed, it is the accuracy of the works of these individuals on whom we will entrust our safety. Upon achievement of our quest, non-autonomous vehicles are likely to be outlawed on public roadways given the perversity of the popularity of fatal car accidents because of human error. Designated private areas will let manual car drivers carry out their hobby, likely to be perceived similarly to designated smoking rooms at airports — “those weird people huddled together engaged in risky endeavors”. We will look back in time and perceive human car drivers with similar puzzlement as we do of elevator operators of the past.