無人駕駛汽車的倫理問題 Driverless cars
A lot of “weird stuff” happens while driving, says Stanford University professor Chris Gerdes. His assertion goes to the heart of one of the problems associated with driverless cars. How can we expect a robot to deal with all the eventualities humans encounter on the road — whether unpredictable pedestrians, rogue traffic cones, or even dead plants blowing in the wind?
斯坦福大學(Standford University)教授克里斯格迪斯(Chris Gerdes)表示，開車的時候會發生許多“奇奇怪怪的事”。他的說法觸及了與無人駕駛汽車有關的一個問題的核心。我們怎麼能夠期望機器人處理人類在路上會遭遇的所有突發事件——無論是無法預測的行人、胡亂擺放的交通錐，還是隨風亂舞的枯死樹枝？
And what about so-called “algorithms of death”: can robots be trusted to choose the least bad outcome in the event of an unavoidable crash?
還有就是所謂的“死亡算法”：面臨不可避免的碰撞，我們能信任機器人選擇最不壞的結果麼？
Autonomous cars are not only pushing a century-old industry to the forefront of innovation. They are also forcing us to face crucial questions about how much control we are willing to hand over to machines.
自動汽車不僅把一個百年曆史的產業推上了創新的前沿。它們還迫使我們面對至關重要的問題：我們願意把多大的控制權交給機器？
Cars that drive themselves may fundamentally reshape the way we view devices — from things that work or fail to a more nuanced picture of machines that can reason but also make mistakes.
能夠自動駕駛的汽車，也許會從根本上改變我們對設備的看法——從要麼工作要麼壞掉的東西，變成一種更細膩的情景：能推理也會犯錯的機器。
“I don’t think we’ve seen a technology quite like this that mirrors what humans do in such an open-ended task,” says Prof Gerdes, director of Stanford’s automotive research laboratory. “It really is a place where we have a robot doing something which, up to this point, has been exclusively human.”When it comes to automated transport, the ethical questions are high stakes and fiendishly complicated.
格迪斯教授是斯坦福大學汽車研究實驗室的主任，他說：“我認爲我們還沒有見過類似這樣的技術，重現人類在這種開放式任務中的所作所爲。真的是讓機器人做某種目前完全由人類做的事。”就自動化交通運輸而言，倫理問題既事關重大，也極爲複雜。
Established manufacturers including Daimler and BMW, as well as tech upstarts such as Tesla and Google, are known to have engaged experts such as Prof Gerdes to discuss ethical questions. Others, such as Fiat Chrysler, say they have engineers “exploring” the implications of autonomous driving.
戴姆勒(Daimler)和寶馬(BMW)等老牌製造商，以及特斯拉(Tesla)和谷歌(Google)等高科技新貴，據悉都已請了格迪斯教授這樣的專家探討倫理問題。而菲亞特-克萊斯勒(Fiat Chrysler)等其他廠商表示，他們的工程技術人員在“探索”自動駕駛的潛在影響。
General Motors says “an autonomous system for production is not close enough today to have answers to these questions, or even to know all the questions”. But Nissan, the Japanese group that with partner Renault is the world’s fourth-largest carmaker, has gone further, appointing a researcher at its Silicon Valley office dedicated to looking at these ethical issues. Melissa Cefkin, an anthropologist, is researching the interaction between autonomously driven vehicles and pedestrians and cyclists.
通用汽車(General Motors)表示：“當今生產的自動系統遠遠不足以掌握這些問題的答案，甚至還不瞭解所有問題。”不過，日產(Nissan)——與它的合作伙伴雷諾(Renault)合起來是全球第四大汽車製造商——走得比較遠，這家日資企業在其硅谷分公司任命了一名專職研究這些倫理問題的研究人員。人類學家梅利莎嬠夫金(Melissa Cefkin)正在研究自動駕駛汽車與行人和騎自行車的人之間的互動。
One layer of ethical questions for driverless cars involves scenarios and thought experiments. Daniel Hirsch, an automotive expert at PA Consulting, poses one: “A child runs on the street and the car has only two options — killing the child or killing the old, cancer-suffering driver.” The “correct” response to this situation in one country or culture might be different in another. It might even be illegal — both German and Swiss law say human lives cannot be weighed against one another.
無人駕駛汽車倫理問題的一個層面涉及不同情景和思想實驗。博安諮詢(PA Consulting)汽車專家丹尼爾欠希(Daniel Hirsch)提出了一個情景：“一個孩子在街上跑動，汽車只有兩個選項：撞死這名兒童，或者使車上的老年癌症患者喪生。”對這個情景，某一國家或文化的“正確”回答在另一個國家或文化也許會不同。這個問題本身可能是非法的——德國和瑞士的法律都規定，不能比較人命孰輕孰重。
And what about the position of big business, such as insurers? “There’s a significant number of these cases in which the insurance company would decide differently — for instance, to them a handicapped child is more expensive than a handicapped elderly person due to remaining lifespan,” says Mr Hirsch.
那麼，保險公司等大企業的立場又如何？赫希表示：“在許多此類案例中，保險公司會做出不同決定——比如，由於剩餘的生命期不同，對它們來說殘障兒童比殘障的老年人更昂貴。”
While fully driverless cars remain some years away, highly automated cars with sophisticated crash-prevention technology are on the road ta wants to build cars that cannot be responsible for a crash, but most modern vehicles have some sort of active safety features. Such considerations are making carmakers take ethical questions seriously.
儘管完全無人駕駛的汽車仍是多年以後的事，但是具備先進防撞技術的高度自動化汽車如今已上路行駛。豐田(Toyota)希望打造不可能爲車禍負責的汽車，然而多數現代汽車都有某種主動安全功能。這方面的考慮令汽車製造商認真考慮倫理問題。
“There is an increasing awareness across all automakers that they have to deal with the psychological issues of these vehicles,” says Hans-Werner Kaas, senior partner at McKinsey, a consultancy. “They’re beefing up their skillset.”
諮詢公司麥肯錫(McKinsey)高級合夥人漢斯-維爾納慍斯(Hans-Werner Kaas)表示：“在所有汽車製造商中，越來越多的製造商認識到，它們必須處理與這些汽車有關的心理問題。它們正在充實各自的技能。”
These moves underline that the industry is hypersensitive to safety following a series of high-profile recalls of millions of vehicles, meaning the race to adopt new technologies must be approached with caution.
這些舉措凸顯出，在涉及數百萬輛汽車的一系列備受關注的召回後——這些事件意味着必須謹慎處理對新技術的競相採用——汽車業對安全問題極爲敏感。
Volvo, which has built its brand around safety, typifies that approach. Erik Coelingh, a senior technical leader for safety at the Swedish carmaker, says: “In practice, we have to make sure a car never gets into a situation where it has to make an impossible choice.”
圍繞安全性打造其品牌的沃爾沃(Volvo)是這一方式的典型。埃裏剋剋林(Erik Coelingh)是這家瑞典汽車製造商主管安全的資深技術主管，他說：“在實踐中，我們必須確保汽車永遠不會陷入必須做出不可能選擇的境地。”
That means driving conservatively and observing traffic rules. To underscore the point, Volvo said in October it would accept full civil liability for accidents caused by its self-driving technology. But that is not the same as saying drivers can enter what one BMW executive calls “brain off” mode.
這就意味着要保守地駕駛汽車並遵守交通規則。爲強調這一點，去年10月沃爾沃表示，將爲其自動駕駛技術導致的事故承擔全部民事賠償責任。不過，這與說駕駛員可以進入寶馬一名高管所稱的“大腦關閉”狀態並不是一回事。
Facing the full ethical dilemma of autonomous cars is still some years away. California — one of the most forward-looking transport regulators — last month adopted draft rules that would require humans to stay in control of a vehicle at all times, as is written in the Vienna Convention observed by many European countries.
人類要到好幾年後纔會面對自動汽車的全部道德困境。上月，最具前瞻性的交通監管機構之一加利福尼亞州通過了要求人類全程控制汽車的規則草案——就像許多歐洲國家遵守的《維也納公約》(Vienna Convention)那樣。
This means fully driverless cars would be “initially excluded from deployment” in California.
這意味着完全無人駕駛的汽車最初將不會在加州上路。
“We as a society have to decide whether we’re ready for a machine, with no driver intervention, to decide what should happen in a critical situation,” says Ian Robertson, BMW’s board member for sales and marketing. “And I’m not sure that we are yet ready for that.”
寶馬主管銷售和市場營銷的董事會成員伊恩圠伯遜(Ian Robertson)表示：“作爲一個社會，我們必須決定我們是否準備讓機器在沒有駕駛員干預的情況下，在危急關頭決定該怎麼做。我不肯定我們已做好準備。”
