"Self-Driving Mercedes Will Be Programmed To Sacrifice Pedestrians To Save The Driver"

A bit of AI news. :thinking:

https://www.fastcompany.com/3064539/self-driving-mercedes-will-be-programmed-to-sacrifice-pedestrians-to-save-the-driver

When they crash, self-driving Mercedes will be programmed to save the driver, and not the person or people they hit. That’s the design decision behind the Mercedes Benz’s future Level 4 and Level 5 autonomous cars, according to the company’s manager of driverless car safety, Christoph von Hugo. Instead of worrying about troublesome details like ethics, Mercedes will just program its cars to save the driver and the car’s occupants, in every situation.

Someone on Reddit:

“Thank God we have facial recognition tech so it can figure out the low credit scores if it has to hurdle through a crowd.”

1 Like

The article was from 2016. I wonder if Mercedes changed the algorithm.

2 Likes

Thanks for catching that. I saw it as a new post on Reddit and didn’t check the date.

I would suggest that all the ambulance-chasing lawyers of victims personally sue Christoph von Hugo, the CEO of Mercedes and the entire programming team which implemented this feature (assuming they did).