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MIT Survey Shows People want Autonomous Self Driving car AI to prioritize young over old

In recent incidents where an Uber autonomous test vehicle struck and killed a pedestrian in Arizona, MIT took a survey with the masses on what are their expectations when it comes to AI. Now this story and scenario are played out multiple times in movies especially for large movies such as iRobot starring Will Smith. In the show, Will Smith has a hate for robots and AI which saved him over his son when his car crashed into the river.

Thus when it comes to autonomous cars, when it comes to a situation where the AI has to crash the car and has to make the decision on which direction to take to minimise damage, what should the proceeding logic be. According to the survey which surveyed over 2 million in 200+ countries, respondents preferred if the AI would take priority of young over the old, humans over animals and prioritize bystanders over jaywalkers.

An interesting point to note was that in the survey, MIT found that respondents in the east didn’t favour that the AI should prioritize the young over the old. But in essence, most of the key points were universally accepted according to lead author Edmond Awad, a postdoc at MIT, said in a release.

Another point to add was that the results showed that people want the AI to choose to prioritize more lives over fewer lives. So these are the key points which will be released in the journal, Nature. Hopefully the folks working on autonomous driving technology would take some of these survey points to heart and drive the necessary changes needed to have the AI choose correctly in no-win situations.

If you feel like giving your opinion on the matter, click on this link here to submit in your own opinions to MIT.

Source: Engadget