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Re:Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders by chiliap2 on Tuesday April 25, 2017 @12:11PM (#14194885)
The utilitarian approach is such an interesting way to frame problems like this. It's obviously wrong for me to murder to my neighbor for their organs, even if those organs could save five other lives. But is it okay for a car company to roll out an AI program if it saves more lives than it costs? When viewed from afar the utilitarian mindset is always so alluring.
Re:Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders by asdfjklasdfjkl on Tuesday April 25, 2017 @01:00PM (#14195567)
I think you're making a bit of a strawman here that people usually do with respect to utilitarianism. The utilitarian answer with 5 people on an island, where 1 is a doctor, 3 need organs, the remaining person has available organs, and the 3 are necessary to keep the group alive -- is to kill the one person and take their organs.

However, in a society where people can observe the actions of others and form motivations in response to policies, etc, you'll find that because society reacts fairly poorly to organ harvesting, because organ harvesting is implausible to do at scale without extra bad things happenning, etc, the utilitarian solution is actually not to go about doing it.

Only a naive utilitarian wouldn't try to also remain consistent with something like a Kantian imperative of global self-coherence.

Now, as for cars and testing self-driving on real folks, well, this may be something where the water is pretty murky. I think that society will react poorly enough to early bad events in self-driving that a measured approach is actually the best for saving lives in the long term.

The critique here shouldn't be that "well, utilitarianism sure looks good from afar, but would you murder your neighbor?" It should be "The problem is too difficult to address with utilitarianism because it involves complex societal factors and responses."

Re:Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders by true_religion on Wednesday April 26, 2017 @07:30AM (#14202134)
It's a bit contearian but if you will lose 100% of your population by not sacrificing 10%, then your scoiety is doomed in a way where normal ethics can't really apply. The guy refusing to give up his organs is going to be condemned as the naysayer nihilist who "wants us all to die".
Re:Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders by BurningFrog on Tuesday April 25, 2017 @01:07PM (#14195681)
I don't think replacing one set of risks with a smaller set of risks is at all morally similar to killing one person to save three.
Re:Alphabet's Self-Driving Cars to Get Their First Real Riders by joshuamorton on Tuesday April 25, 2017 @02:19PM (#14196499)
A Kantian approach also works here though.