IT’S THE NEAR future. A self-driving car is zipping its passengers down a country road when, out of nowhere, a handful of pedestrians stroll into its way. Either the car plows through them or it swerves into a tree, killing those riding inside. What would you rather it do?
If you’re like the people surveyed for a recent study, “The Social Dilemma of Autonomous Vehicles,” in the journal Science, you’d probably like the car to spare the pedestrians—unless you happened to be riding inside. This urge for self-preservation creates a social dilemma that could delay the adoption of the emerging technology and, the authors of the study wrote, perhaps needlessly doom hundreds of thousands of people to preventable traffic deaths.
“Most people want to live in a world where cars will minimize casualties,” said co-author Iyad Rahwan, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a statement. “But everybody wants their own car to protect them at all costs.”