Should Driverless Cars Kill Their Passengers?

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Area: Ethics, Science
Grade Level: High School & Beyond
Topics: utilitarianism
Estimated Time Necessary: 60 Minutes as follow-up to reading

Lesson Plan

Objectives:
Programming and Moral Choice
This lesson explores a contemporary problem in technology and ethics. How should we program driverless cars? In order to answer this question, classical ideas in ethics are explored, especially utilitarianism.

The new technology of driverless cards has opened up a real-world corollary to the 65- year-old philosophical tradition of trolley problems.  The basic question here involves how these cars should be programmed: is the goal to protect passengers or others out on the road?

Read these the two articles and watch the video, which focuses on issues arising from the programming of driverless cars.

spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/people-want-driverless-cars-with-utilitarian-ethics-unless-theyre-a-passenger and www.technologyreview.com/s/542626/why-self-driving-cars-must-be-programmed-to-kill/

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Video

Discussion Questions

  • What are the core moral dilemmas involved in the programming of driverless cars?
  • Who is involved here?
  • Explain the title of the first article.
  • Is there a moral problem with the inconsistency found in the second article? What would happen if everyone refuses to drive a "utilitarian" car?
  • How should these cars be programmed? Why?
This lesson plan was created for PLATO by: Stephen Miller, Oakwood Friends School, Marist College.

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

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