The obvious and immediate answer is no, but what if the car does not have enough distance to break, and the choice is between hitting cyclists with a helmet or without a helmet? Martin Mose Bentzen from PSM poses the question in an article in Weekendavisen, thus placing DTU MAN in the middle of an important debate on ethics, and on the features that engineers build into new products.
Google's driverless test cars are right now driving the streets in the US, and because these cars take over some of the choices normally made by humans, they have made an ethical debate about choices in product design flare up again.
Who is responsible for the features, engineers built into autonomous cars? How do we make decisions on what features to build in? How should e.g. an autonomous car react when an accident of one kind or another is inevitable? Should it protect the driver or vulnerable road users? And finally should it distinguish between cyclists with helmets and those without a helmet?
"In the case of the cyclists, argues Martin Mose, the rider with the helmet will probably have the best chance to survive the collision with the car. On the other hand, the incentive to strap on a helmet suffers when you know that the autonomous cars run down cyclists with helmets instead of those without a helmet. "
Martin Mose, who has also written an article in Ingeniøren on the same subject, argues that it is not only in fields like robotics and biotechnology that ethics gradually is much more inherent in the design phase:
"Most will recognize that e.g. biotechnology is packed with ethical dilemmas, but as far as ethics go it is also gradually becoming a more central topic in the engineering disciplines that do not deal with artificial intelligence or DNA or anything else that in many people's ears rhyme with ethical dilemma."
He points out that "classic engineers" such as structural engineers today often must integrate ethical considerations into their design, because new knowledge of e.g. environmental impacts means that we can recognize and measure far more consequences of each decision in the design phase.
In addition, we are generating new technologies much faster and we are constantly finding new areas in which to apply them. This means that we often face new ethical dilemmas.
A research area on the rise
Earlier major technological advances generated ethical dilemmas. Today we see ethical dilemmas arise more and more often in adjunction to almost any technological innovation. This is indeed new says Martin Mose Bentzen and as he summarizes the driving forces in the rise of ethics in engineering, he predicts a profound change in engineering:
"Measurability, knowledge about secondary consequences and new technologies may well result in a whole new way of thinking engineering and ethics in a near future. In the universities and in R&D departments in the industry the engineers will have to look at ethics as an integral part of their profession rather than an addition they tackle on special occasions. This will have a very significant impact on industrial development departments and the university's way of working in the future. "