NRI: RUI: Autonomous Vehicles: Ethics, Design, and Risk

这个合作研究项目将研究与自动驾驶汽车（如自动驾驶汽车）有关的伦理问题，从编程选择到防止滥用。合作者包括工程师、哲学家和法律专家。自动驾驶汽车开始出现，预计它们将解决很多问题，尤其是交通事故和死亡问题。但是它们不是万无一失的，这意味着（就像任何其他技术一样）它们将受到错误、误用和失败的影响，并且一些设计可能比其他设计更好或更负责任。即使自动驾驶汽车每年可以挽救数千人的生命，行业和研究人员也不能因此免除考虑带来不必要和不当死亡的伦理、法律和政策影响的义务。以这种方式造成的生命损失可能会对这个新兴行业造成毁灭性的、引人注目的影响。该项目的成果将使工业界和学术界受益。可交付成果将包括一份公开报告、一本书、大学水平的课程、会议演讲以及学术和媒体出版物。除了自动驾驶行业，随着将伦理融入工程和科学项目的压力越来越大，该项目还提供了更广泛的机器人伦理和技术伦理方面的研究和材料。PI和他的团队将研究自动驾驶汽车可能卷入事故的不同方式，以及避免碰撞和碰撞优化选项，以减轻在不可避免的碰撞中发生的伤害。他们还将研究各种道德框架的技术和政策可行性，以指导自动驾驶汽车的行动，借鉴经典的伦理困境，正在进行的技术伦理工作，以及前线学术和工业实验室的实际工程。他们还将关注更广泛的问题，比如自动驾驶汽车应该如何处理医疗紧急情况、犯罪行为和其他常见情况。该项目符合美国国家科学基金会的使命，以及其NRI项目的研究呼吁，以更好地理解协作机器人的长期社会、行为和经济影响。因为自动驾驶汽车将成为第一个与社会大规模融合的机器人，它们将为整个社会或协同机器人行业奠定基调。至关重要的是，在这些事态发展之前，考虑到潜在的重大事故之前的问题和情景，这是至关重要的。

This collaborative research project will examine ethical issues that arise in connection with autonomous vehicles (such as self-driving cars), from programming choices to guarding against abuse. Collaborators include engineers, philosophers, and legal experts. Autonomous vehicles are starting to emerge, and they are predicted to solve a lot of problems, especially traffic accidents and fatalities. But they will not be foolproof, meaning that (just like any other technology) they will be subject to error, misuse, and failure, and some designs may be better or more responsible than others. Even if autonomous vehicles can save thousands of lives each year, industry and researchers are not thereby released from the obligation to consider ethical, legal, and policy implications of the bringing about of unnecessary and wrongful deaths. The loss of lives in this way could have a devastating, high profile effect on the nascent industry. The results of this project will benefit both industry and the academia. Deliverables will include a public report, a book, university-level courses, conference talks, and academic as well as media publications. Beyond the autonomous driving industry, this project provides research and materials in robot ethics and technology ethics more broadly, as pressure mounts to integrate ethics into engineering and science programs.The PI and his team will examine the different ways that an autonomous vehicle could be involved in an accident, as well as crash-avoidance and crash-optimization options to mitigate the harm that occurs in unavoidable crashes. They will also investigate the technical and policy feasibility of various ethical frameworks to guide actions by autonomous vehicles by drawing from classical dilemmas in ethics, ongoing work in technology ethics, and real engineering in academic and industry labs on the front lines. They will also attend to broader issues, such as how autonomous cars should handle medical emergencies, criminal conduct, and other common situations. The project is aligned with the NSF's mission, as well as the call of its NRI program for research to gain a better understanding of the long-term social, behavioral and economic implications of co-robots. Because autonomous vehicles are poised to be the first robots to be integrated with society on a large scale, they will set the tone for the entire social or co-robotics industry. It is crucially important to engage ethics ahead of these developments to consider the issues and scenarios in advance of potentially high-profile accidents.