Peter Löscher Chair of Business Ethics, Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Arcisstraße 21, 80333, Munich, Germany.
Institute of Automotive Technology, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Boltzmannstr. 15, 85748, Garching b. Munich, Germany.
Sci Eng Ethics. 2024 Oct 10;30(5):47. doi: 10.1007/s11948-024-00513-0.
Self-driving vehicles (SDVs) will need to make decisions that carry ethical dimensions and are of normative significance. For example, by choosing a specific trajectory, they determine how risks are distributed among traffic participants. Accordingly, policymakers, standardization organizations and scholars have conceptualized what (shall) constitute(s) ethical decision-making for SDVs. Eventually, these conceptualizations must be converted into specific system requirements to ensure proper technical implementation. Therefore, this article aims to translate critical requirements recently formulated in scholarly work, existing standards, regulatory drafts and guidelines into an explicit five-step ethical decision model for SDVs during hazardous situations. This model states a precise sequence of steps, indicates the guiding ethical principles that inform each step and points out a list of terms that demand further investigation and technical specification. By integrating ethical, legal and engineering considerations, we aim to contribute to the scholarly debate on computational ethics (particularly in autonomous driving) while offering practitioners in the automotive sector a decision-making process for SDVs that is technically viable, legally permissible, ethically grounded and adaptable to societal values. In the future, assessing the actual impact, effectiveness and admissibility of implementing the here sketched theories, terms and the overall decision process requires an empirical evaluation and testing of the overall decision-making model.
自动驾驶汽车 (SDV) 需要做出具有伦理维度和规范意义的决策。例如，通过选择特定的轨迹，它们决定了风险在交通参与者之间的分配方式。因此，政策制定者、标准化组织和学者已经对自动驾驶汽车的伦理决策应该包括哪些内容进行了概念化。最终，这些概念化必须转化为具体的系统要求，以确保适当的技术实现。因此，本文旨在将学术工作、现有标准、法规草案和指南中最近制定的关键要求转化为自动驾驶汽车在危险情况下的明确五步伦理决策模型。该模型规定了一个精确的步骤序列，指出了指导每个步骤的道德原则，并指出了需要进一步调查和技术规范的术语列表。通过整合伦理、法律和工程方面的考虑，我们旨在为计算伦理（特别是在自动驾驶领域）的学术辩论做出贡献，同时为汽车行业的从业者提供一种技术上可行、法律上允许、道德上合理且适应社会价值观的自动驾驶汽车决策过程。未来，评估实施这里描述的理论、术语和整体决策过程的实际影响、有效性和可接受性需要对整体决策模型进行实证评估和测试。
