The rise of artificial intelligence is forcing us to take abstract ethical dilemmas much more seriously because we need to code in moral principles concretely. Should a self-driving car risk killing its passenger to save a pedestrian? To what extent should a drone take into account the risk of collateral damage when killing a terrorist? Should robots make life-or-death decisions about humans at all? We will have to make concrete decisions about what we will leave up to humans and what we will encode into software.
Bill Fulkerson on 02 Aug 18"Prosociality is endemic. In a common experiment called the social dilemma, anonymous subjects choose between a "defection" strategy that maximizes their own personal payoffs, and a "cooperation" strategy that gains them slightly less, but gives other members of the group substantially more. Up to 97% of subjects choose cooperation in some social dilemmas. Not surprisingly, researchers have found that the incidence of such prosocial behaviors declines as the personal cost of acting prosocially rises. We are more likely to be nice when it only takes a little, not a lot, of skin off our noses. But the scientific evidence demonstrates the vast majority of people will make at least small sacrifices to follow their conscience and help others."
