Stanford CIS

The Ethics of Saving Lives With Autonomous Cars Are Far Murkier Than You Think

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"But, wait. We should also factor in the many more lives that would be spared. A good consequentialist would look at this bigger picture and argue that as long as there’s a net savings of lives (in our case, 16,000 per year) we have a positive, ethical result. And that judgment is consistent with reactions reported by Stanford Law’s Bryant Walker Smith who posed a similar dilemma and found that his audiences remain largely unconcerned when the number of people saved is greater than the number of different lives killed."

Published in: Press , Autonomous Driving , ethics , Robotics