Administrative Information
| Title | Duty Ethics - Debate |
| Duration | 55 |
| Module | A |
| Lesson Type | Interactive Session |
| Focus | Ethical - Ethics Fundamentals |
| Topic | Ethics of self-driving cars |
Keywords
Duty ethics,self-driving cars,moral trade-off,
Learning Goals
- Learner can apply the knowledge about Duty Ethics, as gained in the lectures, in a debate.
- Learner is able to explore and evaluate the moral dilemma's regarding a practical example, like autonomous vehicles, from this ethical perspective and can take a stand from different viewpoints (e.g. passenger, pedestrian, programmer).
Expected Preparation
Learning Events to be Completed Before
Obligatory for Students
- Awad, E., Dsouza, S., Kim, R., Schulz, J., Henrich, J., Shariff, A., Bonnefon, F. & Rahwan, I. (2018). The moral machine experiment. Nature, 563(7729), 59-64. [1]
- Duty ethics - Kant: School of Life - Kant & Categorical Imperatives: Crash Course Philosophy#35.
Optional for Students
- Alexander, Larry, and Michael Moore "Deontological Ethics" on Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Stanford University, 21 Nov. 2007. [2]
- Panza, C., & Potthast, A. (2010). Ethics for dummies. John Wiley & Sons.
References and background for students
None.
Recommended for Teachers
- Any paper exploring the Ethics Behind Self-Driving Cars
- The Moral Machine project page
- Greene, J. D. (2016). Our driverless dilemma. Science, 352(6293), 1514-1515. [3]
Lesson materials
Instructions for Teachers
Students should form a group of 3-4 and try to discuss about a fake scenario case, trying to stress-out positives and failures of designing a self-driving vehicle following duty ethics principles from different viewpoints (e.g. passenger, pedestrian). You should try helping them answering to several questions regarding this topic, for example:
What do you think?
- Do you think that duty ethics should be the operating principle of an autonomous vehicle?
- Is it more important that the car is ethical or that it can be sold?
It is important to have a debate beside a guided discussion.
In the end, you may help your students with a final exercise. Using moral machine platform, students will face moral dilemmas, where a driverless car must choose the lesser of two evils in an inevitable collision scenario. As an outside observer, the two groups will judge which outcome is more acceptable and confront their results.
Topics to cover
- Introduction (5 min)
- Discussion (moderated) (40 min)
- Wrap-up (10 min)
Acknowledgements
The Human-Centered AI Masters programme was Co-Financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union Under Grant №CEF-TC-2020-1 Digital Skills 2020-EU-IA-0068.