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.  

Breath test for alcohol – Airline pilots

 Airline pilots are routinely checked for alcohol (ethanol) content in the breath. Any BAC (breath Alcohol Content) reading above 0.08% (0.08 g in 100 g of blood) is taken as “Under the influence of alcohol” and they are not allowed to fly aircraft and putting so many lives at risk. However, there are a lot of factors that affect BAC such as body weight, fatigue and stress factors.

The public understand that many a times pilots fail this test. What happens after testing positive is anybody’s guess!

I have a few queries:

Ø  Whether due to acute shortage of senior or junior pilots, the “drunk” pilots are allowed to fly?

Ø  What are the responsibilities of the regulators in such cases?

Ø  What happens if the regulators are hand-in-glove with the operation staff?

Only way to safeguard the safety of passengers is to ensure that the regulators are beyond corruption, and provide incentives to the young Indians to take the profession of airline pilots so that at any given time we have enough number of pilots available for recruitment by airlines.  

Air purifiers – HEPA system

In India, air pollution in cities is a major public health concern. Most of the time the levels are reported to be 3 o 4 times higher than the permissible limits. The situation is very grave.

Refer today’s TOI news on air purifiers.

Generally, pollution in the air is made up of a lot of gaseous chemicals -oxides of nitrogen sulphur and carbon, trace elements, some of them are toxic or carcinogenic. There are particulate matter of different sizes (PM₁₀, PM_2.5) there are chemicals, Greenhouse gases (CO₂) vehicular exhausts-mostly organics, smoke particulates, heavy metals etc, etc. The concentration of the pollution in air varies from place to place depending on the location of sources of the pollution, wind velocity and wind direction.

It should be borne in mind that there is no single filter which can remove all these pollutants from the air. High Efficiency Particulate Air (HEPA) Filters are available in the market today to remove about 99% of the particulates of sub-micron size. The so-called advertised HEPA air purifiers are expensive and available for use at home. There are many brands coming in the market. Consumers will be taken for a ride by the advertisements and marketing strategy.

As a consumer, one should ask the following questions:

1.   HEPA is a particulate filter. How it is going the remove gaseous and organic pollutants?

2.    The filter is highly efficient. Due to high dust load, the filter is going get choked within a few days. Replacement of the filters will be very expensive.

3.     In a practical sense, one has to close all windows and doors in rooms, put on AC and then use the HEPA filtration system. Is it practical?

4.     What will be the operational cost per month for say 4 hours a day use?

5.     What happens when the person goes out for daily walk or travel in a car or bus? He will be exposed to the same polluted air outside.

6.  Health issues will be more when you expose your biological systems to very clean air inside a room and highly polluted air outside routinely.

The only way to solve this problem is to reduce the pollution levels below the permissible levels. Every one of us should focus on reducing pollution at the source rather than spending hard-earned money on such air purifiers. 

Age-wise distribution of cancers

It is reported that (TOI, 31^st Jan, 2017) half the cancer patients are in 60 plus age group. It is not unexpected. Cancer is a known old age disease.

There is large increase in the life expectancy of population over the years, i.e., the 2014 world average life expectancy is 71.5years compared to the 1950 world average life expectancy of 48years. Since the latency period (waiting period from induction to development of malignant tumour) of cancer is 20 to 40 years, cancer is seen, in general, after well past 50 years of age. Cancer fatality rate is thus increased, numerically!