Author: Patrick Lin
Publisher: TED-Ed
Publication Year: 2015
Summary: The following video breaks down a real-life ethical decision that has to be made when utilizing automated systems, particularly self-driving cars. The author presents a scenario in which a self-driving car is boxed into a lane, with 2 cars on each side of him and a dump truck ahead of him. Heavy items begin to fall out of the dump truck that will possibly kill the driver if he or she stays in their lane, but they could also swerve out of their lane and collide with another car so as to avoid the falling objects. Here, the decision is not up to the person in the car, but to the engineers and scientists that program the decision making of the vehicle. It is an extremely controversial decision to make, but it represents the kinds of decisions we will have to make as data scientists while building our models. When dealing with real people, our models will likely benefit some more than others, so we are left with the difficult decision of how to create the most good.