Moral decisions and Artificial Intelligence

It is reported that Driverless cars (Self driving cars) are expected to be on Britain’s roads by 2025. The cars can make “life and death” decisions on the roads! How?

So far, robots and other artificial intelligence based systems are being used in hospitals for surgery and other interventional procedures. Now, driverless cars on the roads to take moral decisions in situations where a collision with human being on the road is unavoidable!

A neuroscientist Leon Sutfeld and Prof. Gordon Pipa at the University of Osnabruck, Germany who are working on driverless cars, is stating that Human behavior in dilemma situations can be modeled by a “simple value of life based model that is attributed by the participant to every human, animal or inanimate object”. (Ref. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, 2017, 11, DOI:10.3389/fnbeh.2017.00122).

The ethical aspect is questionable?  Can machines take human-like moral decisions?

It is true that everybody is expected to follow traffic rules strictly. However, can a driverless car run over a child running on to the road rather than crashing on to an adult standing on the footpath while trying to save the child? Any answers?

“Designer babies” in 30 years?

As per a professor from Stanford University, One need not have sex to procreate! (TOI News dated 5^th July). Parents can choose from a range of embryos created in a lab with their DNA! Body organs can be created in the labs or regrow damaged organs or tissues.

The embryos can be screened for any potential diseases, and can have choice on the color of the hair or the eyes. Certain diseases can be avoided in the future.

Now, where are we heading? No need to marry and gets tied up with one another for life.  Already, some studies have indicated that number of times the married couples having sex has decreased drastically and as of 2014, the number is just 55 times a year. Couples are busy with mobiles or laptops. . Marriage will lose its importance and divorce rates will go up fighting for the type of child the couples would like to have.

The Technology can be misused to create monsters or children without any emotional quotient.

It is time that international organizations such WHO, United Nations wake up to this reality of the technological advances and regulate such activities so the world will not have emotionless monsters, and marriage as an institution will remain for some more time.