Institut für Kognitionswissenschaft

Institute of Cognitive Science


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07. May 2018 : A wonderful paper that explains well why we need obligatory ethics setting implemented in autonomous driving vehicles.

New publ.:

Faulhaber AK, Dittmer A, Blind F, Wächter MA, Timm S, Sütfeld LR, Stephan A, Pipa G and König P (2018). Human decisions in moral dilemmas are largely described by utilitarianism: Virtual car driving study provides guidelines for autonomous driving vehicles. Sci Eng Ethics
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-018-0020-x

Due to the necessity of implementing moral decisions in autonomous driving vehicles (ADVs), we conducted a set of driving experiments in virtual reality. The participants experienced unexpected unavoidable dilemma situations with human-like avatars of different ages and group sizes and in a variety of circumstances and had to decide who was to be spared. Derived from the findings, which show that participants, in general, decide in a utilitarian manner, we argue for the necessity of obligatory ethics setting implemented in ADVs.