AUTONOMOUS CARS CASE ANALYSIS

AUTONOMOUS CARS CASE ANALYSIS

Important note before you proceed: Please note that this option could be disturbing to you, as it talks about the ethics of choosing to sacrifice one life to save another).

According to an HBR article – Managing Our Hub Economy (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site., “If consumers embrace self-driving vehicles, an hour of access to car commuters could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.” Proving that discussing and better understanding these driverless cars is very important. The key information systems put into these cars, however, have to be programmed to take these actions.

Please listen to the following podcast to get some background information on the topic:

The Moral Machine (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. – Help make driverless cars more moral – here is the test that was discussed in the driverless dilemma. Please complete the test and take a print screen of your results to submit together with your assignment (you will need to choose the JUDGE option to do this).

An article in the MIT Review reports that it is not only the moral issues that will need to be ironed out but a host of other threats.

Lastly, this article talks about 6 surprising ways in which driverless cars will change the world (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site..

Completing the Case Analysis:

1. Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of the hub economy. Do you believe most people are benefitting from this type of an economy or are hurt by it? Support your answer.
2. Conduct some research into the size of the driverless market and discuss whether this technological advancement creates value for the economy. Discuss the biggest players in the industry.
3. “Deconstruct” the driverless car and discuss the technologies that are necessary for a driverless car to work.
4. Discuss the idea of adversarial machine learning. Do you believe these types of threats will derail widespread use of autonomous vehicles?
5. Discuss the surprising ways in which driverless cars will change the world (choose one or several of them). Do you believe this/these change(s) will be positive?
6. Discuss your thoughts on the topic and the assignment. How did it make you feel to have to choose whom to sacrifice to save someone else? How do you feel if your answers are part of the “public’s” version of how the cars should make decisions?
7. If you were to have a million dollars right now, would you invest in TESLA? Defend your answer.
8. Appendix – screenshot of your completed Moral Machine Test
9. References -Provide references for any sources outside of those I asked you to consider as part of the assignment.