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they can never be perfectly safe-(How to Help Self-Driving Cars Make Ethical Decisions.”)
Why Self-Driving Cars Must Be Programmed to Kill
Self-driving cars are already cruising the streets. But before
they can become widespread, carmakers must solve an impossible ethical
dilemma of algorithmic morality.
So it’ll come as no surprise that many car manufacturers are beginning to think about cars that take the driving out of your hands altogether (see “Drivers Push Tesla’s Autopilot Beyond Its Abilities”). These cars will be safer, cleaner, and more fuel-efficient than their manual counterparts. And yet they can never be perfectly safe.
And that raises some difficult issues. How should the car be programmed to act in the event of an unavoidable accident? Should it minimize the loss of life, even if it means sacrificing the occupants, or should it protect the occupants at all costs? Should it choose between these extremes at random? (See also “How to Help Self-Driving Cars Make Ethical Decisions.”)
The answers to these ethical questions are important because they could have a big impact on the way self-driving cars are accepted in society. Who would buy a car programmed to sacrifice the owner?
So can science help? Today, we get an answer of sorts thanks to the work of Jean-Francois Bonnefon at the Toulouse School of Economics in France and a couple of pals. These guys say that even though there is no right or wrong answer to these questions, public opinion will play a strong role in how, or even whether, self-driving cars become widely accepted.
So they set out to discover the public’s opinion using the new science of experimental ethics. This involves posing ethical dilemmas to a large number of people to see how they respond. And the results make for interesting, if somewhat predictable, reading. “Our results provide but a first foray into the thorny issues raised by moral algorithms for autonomous vehicles,” they say.
Here is the nature of the dilemma. Imagine that in the not-too-distant future, you own a self-driving car. One day, while you are driving along, an unfortunate set of events causes the car to head toward a crowd of 10 people crossing the road. It cannot stop in time but it can avoid killing 10 people by steering into a wall. However, this collision would kill you, the owner and occupant. What should it do?
One way to approach this kind of problem is to act in a way that minimizes the loss of life. By this way of thinking, killing one person is better than killing 10.
But that approach may have other consequences. If fewer people buy self-driving cars because they are programmed to sacrifice their owners, then more people are likely to die because ordinary cars are involved in so many more accidents. The result is a Catch-22 situation.
Bonnefon and co are seeking to find a way through this ethical dilemma by gauging public opinion. Their idea is that the public is much more likely to go along with a scenario that aligns with their own views.
So these guys posed these kinds of ethical dilemmas to several hundred workers on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to find out what they thought. The participants were given scenarios in which one or more pedestrians could be saved if a car were to swerve into a barrier, killing its occupant or a pedestrian.
At the same time, the researchers varied some of the details such as the actual number of pedestrians that could be saved, whether the driver or an on-board computer made the decision to swerve and whether the participants were asked to imagine themselves as the occupant or an anonymous person.
The results are interesting, if predictable. In general, people are comfortable with the idea that self-driving vehicles should be programmed to minimize the death toll.
This utilitarian approach is certainly laudable but the participants were willing to go only so far. “[Participants] were not as confident that autonomous vehicles would be programmed that way in reality—and for a good reason: they actually wished others to cruise in utilitarian autonomous vehicles, more than they wanted to buy utilitarian autonomous vehicles themselves,” conclude Bonnefon and co.
And therein lies the paradox. People are in favor of cars that sacrifice the occupant to save other lives—as long they don’t have to drive one themselves.
Bonnefon and co are quick to point out that their work represents the first few steps into what is likely to be a fiendishly complex moral maze. Other issues that will need to be factored into future thinking are the nature of uncertainty and the assignment of blame.
Bonnefon and co say these issues raise many important questions: “Is it acceptable for an autonomous vehicle to avoid a motorcycle by swerving into a wall, considering that the probability of survival is greater for the passenger of the car, than for the rider of the motorcycle? Should different decisions be made when children are on board, since they both have a longer time ahead of them than adults, and had less agency in being in the car in the first place? If a manufacturer offers different versions of its moral algorithm, and a buyer knowingly chose one of them, is the buyer to blame for the harmful consequences of the algorithm’s decisions?”
These problems cannot be ignored, say the team: “As we are about to endow millions of vehicles with autonomy, taking algorithmic morality seriously has never been more urgent.”
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1510.03346 : Autonomous Vehicles Need Experimental Ethics: Are We Ready for Utilitarian Cars?
10 Earthquake prone cities in India you should know
Earthquake prone cities in India
The epicentre of the earthquake was the mountain region between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The tremors were felt in many regions in India like Chandigarh, Srinagar, Delhi NCR though no damage has been reported yet.
India is very prone to earthquakes as well. The major reason for the high frequency and intensity of the earthquakes is that the Indian plate is driving into Asia at a rate of approximately 47 mm/year. As per the Geographical statistics, almost 54% of the land in India is vulnerable to earthquakes.
According to the estimates shown by a World Bank and United Nations report; around 200 million city dwellers in India will be exposed to storms and earthquakes by 2050.
The latest version of the seismic zoning map of India assigns four levels of seismicity for India in terms of zone factors, which means India is divided into 4 seismic zones:
Zone 2
Zone 3
Zone 4
Zone 5
Zone 5 is highly prone to the earthquake with the highest level of seismicity whereas Zone 2 is associated with the lowest level of seismicity. So, the Zones - marked two to five -indicate areas most likely to experience tremors with five being the most vulnerable.
Indian cities, ranging from the metros to the smaller cities - all at least once have been shaken up due to earthquakes which usually range from medium to high intensity on the Richter scale.
With some research we present you the top 10 Indian cities which are observed as high earthquake prone zones:
1. Guwahati - Assam
Guwahati falls in zone five of the seismic zones in India which is highly prone to earthquakes. The place has seen some of the deadliest earthquakes and even today small tremors are a common situation. Guwahati receives earthquake predictions on a daily basis; resulting which many adjoining areas in the North-East get affected.
2. Srinagar - Jammu and Kashmir
This capital city of Jammu and Kashmir also comes under Seismic Zone 5.
Most parts of the Kashmir Valley, which is around 11% of the area of the state covering the Districts of Srinagar, Ganderbal, Baramulla, Kupwara, Bandipora, Budgam, Anantnag, Pulwama, Doda, Ramban, Kishtwar, come under Seismic Zone 5, where around 50% of the population of the state lives. The rest of the state, including the whole of the Ladakh region and Jammu Division (90% of the total area of the state), are under the Seismic Zone 4.
Being very close to the Himalayas, Srinagar faces heavy risk of earthquakes, high as well as moderate. The friction between the Indian and the Eurasian plane causes earthquakes to occur on the areas close to the Himalayas.
Delhi is categorised under Seismic Zone 4.
Delhi has been hit by five devastating earthquakes measuring higher than magnitude of 5 since 1720. The most prone to earthquake neighbourhoods in Delhi lie about two miles on either side of the Yamuna river, the southwestern outskirts of the city known as the Chhattarpur basin, as well as an area popularly known as The Ridge in Delhi
4. Mumbai - Maharashtra
Mumbai falls in the Zone 4 of the seismic zone divisions which makes it quite vulnerable to damage.
We all know Mumbai is located on the coastal line, which increases the risk of facing tsunami-like disasters. Mild to strong earthquakes are very common in parts of Mumbai. Mild earthquakes are often faced by people living there and parts of the adjoining regions of Gujarat. It should be noted that for the last 20 years, almost all of the buildings in Mumbai have been designed and built keeping in mind that the city falls in seismic zone 4.
5. Chennai - Tamil Nadu
The city, formerly in the comfort Zone 2, has now shifted to Zone 3 - indicating higher seismic activity. According to the seismic mapping , districts in the western part along the border with Kerala are also in Zone 3, along with districts along the border of Andhra Pradesh and a section of the border with Karnataka.
The status of Chennai along with major towns on the eastern coast in terms of vulnerability has increased especially after Chennai experienced tremors in September 2001 following a quake measuring 5.6 on the Richter scale off the Pondicherry coast.
Tamil Nadu, had faced the wrath of the deadly 2004 tsunami when the Marina beach was affected.
Recently, in the year 2012, Chennai shook terribly due to a rather high intensity earthquake (having its epicentre in the Indian Ocean).
The other 5 cities in right order of chronology are:
6. Pune - Maharashtra
7. Kochi - Kerala
8. Kolkata - West Bengal
9. Thiruvananthapuram - Kerala
10. Patna - Bihar
Source: National Disaster Management Authority. GOI
Image Source: NDMA
2 days ago
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This device works on the concept of P wave and S wave.
This is just like fire alarm, it will alarm you in case of Earthquake
and 1-40 sec prior. In some of the countries government have
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it becomes important to have these at every place.
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