[rifung]

> Lives at stake don't change anything here. The question is whether self-driving cars, even with the errors, are safer for people than regular drivers on average. If so, then absolutely yes everyone should bet their lives and their families'.

Maybe logically that makes sense but from an ethical perspective I argue it's much more complicated than that (e.g. the trolley problem)

In the current system if a human is at fault, they take the blame for the accident. If we decide to move to self driving cars that we know are far from perfect but statistically better than humans, who do we blame when an accident inevitably happens? Do we blame the manufacturer even though their system is operating within the limits they've advertised?

Or do we just say well, it's better than it used to be and it's no one's fault? When the systems become significantly better than humans, I can see this perhaps being a reasonable argument, but if it's just slightly better, I'm not sure people will be convinced.

[craftinator]

I'm voting for the "less dead people" option. Mostly because I'm a selfish person, been in automobile accidents caused by lapsing human attention, and I want it to be less likely that I'll die in a car crash.

[cameronbrown]

But it's not just about quantity. It's also _different_ people who will die. That radically alters things from an ethical perspective.

[erobbins]

I vote for that option as well.

So far, I have been killed exactly zero times in car crashes. All the empirical evidence tells me that there's no need to surrender control to a computer.

If I die in a crash, perhaps I'll change my mind...

[strbean]

Do we gain something from placing blame? Who do we blame for people who die from natural disasters? Freak occurrences?

Are deaths where blame can be placed preferable to deaths where it cannot? By what factor? Should we try to exchange one of the latter for two of the former?