In 1-2 paragraphs, write what you think (or know) are the broad implications for society from the development and adoption of self-driving vehicle technology. What are the positive aspects, the not so positive, and the important considerations (e.g., ethical)? You have until 10:05.
I think that over a long period of innovation and refinement self-driving cars could greatly improve the quality of life and commute that people across the world do every morning and every evening after work. I believe for them to be fully implemented is a long strenuous process but once they are working, the shift in the market to them will likely be exponential. My theory is that the more self driving cars on the road, the more data they are able to send to each other and make travel much more efficient. For example, traffic is largely a result of overbreaking, overaccelerating, and poor merging onto the highway, a self driving car could use the data about the surrounding cars to minimize this as much as possible. Not only would this make travel faster, but passengers would be able to potentially sleep, do work, or just not have to focus on driving. This is very likely a perfect situation though, and things will be more complicated without a doubt.
There are also a lot of negatives to self driving cars and a level of risk people have to accept by losing control. For people to begin putting their life in the hands of self driving cars there must be a very high level of safety. If these cars are even equally likely to get into a car crash as people are now, I forsee a lot of controversy and issues in sales. Additionally, there is a societal risk and barrier of understanding that everyone has to agree with to allow self driving cars because of the risk it may cause to pedestrians and outsiders. Those who aren’t in the cars or choose not to buy them have to drive or walk along side them and are putting themselves in a potential risk too. I forsee this being less of a problem if self driving cars aren’t as likely to hit a pedestrian as a regular driver, but notheless it could be a hot talking point and heavy limitation to the field.
A number of mandatory ethical questions are necessary to have programmed in also. If the car is going to hit someone who is elderly or a child the car has to make a decision in that case… Or maybe it doesn’t and the car shouldn’t be able to choose who’s life it takes. Furthermore, when it comes to animals, or the amount of people (say 4 elderly people versus 1 child) how does that change the cars reaction. We will definitely have to figure out what the common consensus is for the answers in these situations and I highy doubt everyone will be able to agree in every situation. If there was somehow a nation wide vote to choose the standardized ethics it would very quickly get political and be a concerning idea to many that they can vote who lives and who dies. Ideally, the cars can be so efficient that driving based casualties are minimized and with proper braking the ethics doesn’t end up being such a large conundrum. Not on the ethical side, but it could be important to evaluate how people can enjoy driving too and what self-driving technology implies to that (i.e. people are forced to go fully autonomous for the safety of others and give up the freedoms of personally driving).