Autonomous Cars
Since the industrial revolution of the early 19th century, new technology has been constantly developing and replacing the older technologies. The whole idea is to make life easier for consumers. The easier life becomes through technological advances; the more likely consumers will be willing to invest in technology. Perhaps one of the most revolutionary technologies created was the automobile. No longer did people have to ride on horse carriages, now they simply get in a car and could get to their destination a lot faster and without having to give horses food and water. Instead, people would now have to learn how to keep their cars running by servicing them properly. This meant that oil, gas, water and other fluids had to be accounted for in order to ensure the vehicles performance. Fast forward one hundred years and cars can now read and tell the driver everything the car needs from an oil change, to a leaking tire, to an overheating engine and even senses when your seat belt is not properly adjusted. All of these added safety features happened over time and made life easier for drivers. However, this would mean that less and less drivers would know how to fix their own problems and were more likely to take their cars into the shop for a checkup instead of doing it themselves. The concept of the self-driven car is, of course, revolutionary but it is also one of the most controversial and ethical topics in 2017. Though it sounds like a dream to have a computerized chauffer while kicking back in the passenger seat, it is actually more than likely to become a reality in the coming years. However, there is much more to look into than simply placing a self-driving car on the street without raising numerous questions. There are as many advocates are there are people resenting the idea. It is without a doubt that there are pros and cons to autonomous self-driven cars and the most important must be addressed; however, accepting self-driven cars into the streets may bring more problems that actual solutions. For instance, in his article, “Driverless Cars Will Face Moral Dilemas,” Larry Greenemeir raises the ethical question of how safe cars are for both passengers and pedestrians. He brings up the scenario of there being unavoidable injury in a situation where a self-driven car is cruising down the street and a kid suddenly goes on the street to retrieve his ball. Should the car swerve and jeopardize the passenger family’s lives or should the car continue on its route to ensure the safety of the passengers. These types of questions are what regulators and manufacturers must bring to the table in the preliminary stages of creating the cars. This also becomes a big question of liability. Who should be held accountable for a vehicle crashing into an object or person. Should the programmers, manufacturers or buyers be held accountable. As described in the article “Google’s Autonomous vehicle,” there are many questions and complications on liability that should also be addressed. For example, “If the software misinterprets a worn down sign does the blame fall on the department of transportation for a poorly maintained signage or the company who produced the self-driving software?” Though there is a lot of controversy to address before society allows for self-driven cars to hit the street, it is without a doubt that there are definite pros to having self-driven cars. For one, the whole idea of the system is to minimize car accidents that are caused by human error, which is about ninety percent of car crashes across the globe. With a solidified autonomous driving software, there will be millions of lives saved throughout the world. In theory, these autonomous cars can run on software, such as google maps, to help direct them. This means that software engineers must be very careful and sensitive when drafting the system. For instance, there is numerous amounts of police officers pulling cars over for wreck less driving due to the driver being intoxicated. With self-driven cars, the total number of “Driving under the influence,” or DUI, would surely lessen. Not to mention the number of intoxicated drivers that would be saved from fatal car accidents, and in which cases involve innocent bystanders. In the United States alone, drunk driving costed the government $199 billion dollars in 2014 (Intoxalock). These billions of dollars could definitely used in another sector of our society, such as our seemingly broken education system. Nonetheless, a lot of that money can also be used to develop a much safer operating system for the self-driven cars themselves. Furthermore, even though a lot of people say they enjoy driving, most do not refer to driving in bumper to bumper traffic where traffic is hardly moving. Autonomous cars would, of course, remove this part of the stressful day and instead allow the driver to play passenger and perhaps even take a rest while waiting for traffic jams to clear. It has been proven that a lot of accidents happen when the driver is in pressured situations, such as traffic, and by relieving the driver of stressful situations, it would not be surprising of car accidents decline. This is all assuming that the operating software is not flawed and safe to use. This could be something that companies could definitely take advantage of when creating an autonomous car. In turn the creation of a new self-driven car creates job for the American people, assuming that the car models will be American made. History and Henry Ford taught us that American made cars can help skyrocket the economic system and boost people up to middle class. Though times are different and there are many different factors in today’s society, the birth of a popular car industry would be beneficial for socio-economic reasons. However, there are many contrary factors that suggest that maybe it is a lot more ethically wrong than we first perceive. Though a new car industry can create jobs, they can also take other people’s job by default. For example, with new autonomous cars, it would be a matter of time before taxi and Uber service would be replaced with autonomous cars. There are millions of people around the world that depend on being a taxi/uber driver. These people would need to seek elsewhere for employment as they would be replaced with computer software. Furthermore, a bigger door also opens up for hackers and programming errors. Any computer can be hacked. These safety concerns are not to be taken lightly. There are countless hacks every year on big companies like Sony, Google, Yahoo, etc. As learned from previous experiences, important information in the wrong hands can be very detrimental. People already are afraid that technology does not allow us to have personal security, especially because of social media, with the probability of hackers jeopardizing a passenger’s life, it is almost unreasonable to even consider autonomous self-driven cars. Nonetheless, from a utilitarian perspective, one must accept that history is simply playing its course and with innovations in technology comes a change in society. Humans are programmed into being problem solvers and finding out what are the most efficient ways of accomplishing tasks. With that being said, with the inventions of autonomous self-driven cars, it is almost imminent that they will take the market at one point or another but it is more important that we accept this and learn to better live in a society with self-driven cars. As stated earlier, the most important factor that the consumers are most worried about is the safety of the car itself. A lot of companies are independently creating their own prototypes without the existence of government regulations. This could be dangerous, especially if developers do not do their “do diligent” and allow for loopholes and hackers to access their database. With government regulations, this means that at least there will be some type of all around benchmark that manufacturers must attest to before they market their products as successful and safe. Moreover, if there is a breach in the system, hackers would have to answer to the government and not to small independent companies who probably would not have the money to chase after them. In turn, more hackers would be discouraged in participating in an act that could tally up a felony in their records. Conversely, a lot of the public would feel a net of safety from the government if they somehow become involved with an autonomous self-driven car. From a rights approach, one would argue about the availability of self-driven cars to people of different socio-economic standings. Today, there are many new cars that use top technology, such as Tesla, but were not made affordable to a lot of people. Many of their cars began at $100,000 plus. It was not until recently that they started becoming more and more affordable to consumers of different corners in society. For example, their model 3 is just starting at $35,000 compared to their first model, the Tesla Roadster, at $109,000. With a growing popularity and change from fossil fuels to solar panels and electricity, it is important that it becomes affordable to as many people as possible. As human beings, we should all have the right to have access to more affordable power sources, especially in more remote areas. In my personal opinion, autonomous cars need to undergo a lot of regulations before becoming a reality. From a business perspective, it makes a lot of sense for manufacturers to push for the market of autonomous cars to open. However, there is also ethics in business that needs to be considered before continuing to push. Companies cannot merely look at it in the sense of making money, but instead what are the ethical liabilities that they will have to assume as sellers. It also does not make sense to take jobs from people that have been already relying on personally driving cars such as truck drivers, taxi drivers, etc. Yes, there will be more jobs created within the automotive business but this completely neglects the commercial drivers of the world. Furthermore, I would feel a lot more comfortable with making my decisions when driving in a precarious situation and not rely on a computerized system that can very well fail or pick an irrational alternative. In other words, there are people that would rather hold their safety in their own hands instead of giving it up to an automated system. Even though most car accidents are caused by human error, it would take time for drivers to fully trust any autonomous car system. This would also mean competition within insurance companies would increase. In turn, the country’s financial system would also be tipped in balance. Insurance companies are closely tied with many banking institutions and Wall Street. Point is, the government needs to find a balance point when making regulations. Though companies can argue that autonomous self-driven cars can encourage more work productivity throughout the day, due to an eradicated traffic stress, there are also psychological drawbacks that can occur. It is important for a person to be oriented wherever they may find themselves. If people begin to rely on cars to know their geography for them, it is inevitable that we will lose our ability to manually navigate a map without the help of technology. A human’s naturally sense is to psychologically establish an understanding of their environment around them. Meaning, if there is a case of an emergency, a human can draw conclusions on what the best forms of survival are based on the psychical scanning of the terrain in which they find themselves in. Moreover, observers of several science studies are failing to take into consideration of how the artificial intelligence of cars is being developed. Scientists explain that “autonomous vehicles make decisions based on speed, weather, road conditions, distance and other data gathered by a variety of sensors including cameras, LiDARS and radars” (scientificamerican.com). Obviously, humans make decisions both consciously and subconsciously, thus making a lot of our decisions different, yet similar to decisions that artificial intelligence would make. Ragunathan Rajkumar, professor of electrical and computer engineering in Carnegie Mellon University’s Cylab, says “the bigger concern I have about the autonomous vehicles is the ability to keep them protected from hackers who might want to take over their controls while someone is onboard.” Therefore, government ran self-driving cars would highly be unlikely due to the fact that hackers can access classified information and even control the car’s maneuvering as well. There has been a website recently launched called Moral Machine which helps gather information about how people would prefer for self-driven cars to react in different scenarios where passenger and pedestrian safety are at odds. Opening a discussion among the public is perhaps thing done toward building autonomous self-driven cars. It does not make sense for people to buy these cars if they do not represent their common safety concerns. Lobbysists will try and meet in the middle somewhere that money and safety intersect. However, it is up to the people to dictate whether these self-driven cars will be safe enough by voicing their opinions and not spending their money until they feel that their safety is being taken into account over everything else. Sources: 1."AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES | SELF-DRIVING VEHICLES ENACTED LEGISLATION." NCSL. N.p., 12 Apr. 2017. Web. 11 Apr. 2017. <http://www.ncsl.org/research/transportation/autonomous-vehicles-self-driving-vehicles- enacted-legislation.aspx>. 2. "Ethics." Google's Autonomous Vehicle. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2017. <http://googlesautonomousvehicle.weebly.com/ethics.html>. 3. Greenemeier, Larry. "Driverless Cars Will Face Moral Dilemmas." Scientific American. N.p., 23 June 2016. Web. 13 Apr. 2017. <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/driverless-cars-will-face-moral-dilemmas/>. 4. Intoxalock Ignition Interlock Device – Car Breathalyzer - 888-283-5899. "Regain your license with an ignition interlock." Intoxalock - Ignition Interlock. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 May 2017. <https://www.intoxalock.com/>. 5. Kalra, Nidhi. "How California is trying to keep autonomous vehicle development on track." TechCrunch. TechCrunch, 10 Apr. 2017. Web. 13 Apr. 2017. https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/10/how-california-is-trying-to-keep-autonomous-vehicle- development-on-track/ 6. Lin, Patrick. "The Ethics of Autonomous Cars." The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 08 Oct. 2013. Web. 13 Apr. 2017. <https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/10/the-ethics-of-autonomous- cars/280360/>. 7. Lubin, Gus. "Self-driving cars are already deciding who to kill." Business Insider. Business Insider, 29 Dec. 2016. Web. 09 Apr. 2017. <http://www.businessinsider.com/self-driving- cars-already-deciding-who-to-kill-2016-12>. 8. Metz, Cade. "Self-Driving Cars Will Teach Themselves to Save Lives—But Also Take Them." Wired. N.p., 09 June 206. Web. 14 Apr. 2017. <https://www.wired.com/2016/06/self-driving-cars-will-power-kill-wont-conscience/>. 9. Myers, Joeh. "How will self-driving cars make life or death decisions?" World Economic Forum. N.p., 15 Aug. 2016. Web. 08 Apr. 2017. <https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/08/the-ethics-of-self-driving-cars-what-would-you- do/>.
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California's Department of Motor Vehicles proposed new regulations that set certain rules within the testing and deployment of autonomous vehicles. One of the regulation is that developers have to wait six months before an autonomous vehicle is approved. The State is providing these regulations because there is still no specific evidence that proves that a self-driven car is safe. As part of the process developers have to submit to the state the same "safety assessment" letter they are required to provide to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration. Yet, many people agree that no regulations are necessary, they believe that the state needs to be a lot stricter than just paper work being done for autonomous vehicles. People are concern about their safety. In my opinion, six months should not be a set date before approving an autonomous vehicle. We are talking about a vehicle that contains people within, do we really have to set up a time to know when a vehicle is safe? In my opinion, no! It can take months, or even years for a robotic car to be considered safe for humans. It should take DMV as long as need for them to approve an autonomous car. Not too long ago, an Uber self-driven car was flipped do to its technical difficulties. That is just an example, of how self-driven cars and not being checked and tested accurately and DMV has been rushed to approved self-driven cars. DMV has to be more strict and make sure they think about the people and not the companies when it comes to accepting a self-driven car.
Source: Kalra, Nidhi. "How California is trying to keep autonomous vehicle development on track." TechCrunch. TechCrunch, 10 Apr. 2017. Web. 13 Apr. 2017. https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/10/how-california-istrying-to-keep-autonomous-vehicle- development-on-track/ Food technology is an ethical issue, an immensely serious one that connects us all. Every day millions and millions of people eat not knowing the history of their meal. Others don't even eat, and when they do is unhealthy low quality food that somehow the government wasn't able to regulate. Millions and millions of low income workers work extra hours on a daily basis and keep standing below the poverty line. This puts them eligible for food stamps. That is a problem, workers should not be having a problem with having enough money to pay the bills and have enough food at the table. Another problem is that prices keep ricing and wages are not. Yet that’s not the big problem, the big problem is what’s in our foods.
With our advance technologies scientist have created food products that taste similar to regular organic products. For example, for years scientist have studies natural products like vegetables and fruits. Slowly they have developed new technologies for produce to grow faster and last longer. Their goal is to distribute as many produce as they can too many locations, this is called monocultures. In my opinion the problem with monocultures is that we shouldn’t use the crops we grow to transport long distance places. Sometimes the value of the crop goes up, just for the fact that it’s being transported from another place. Also having to know that we are using technology to manipulate our produce might not necessary be healthy for us. Can you imagine transforming modify foods to another state or even to another country. What can happen to the chemicals within the food product while is being transported? Can it cause human health damage? In my opinion it’s not safe at all. Vegetables and Fruits were mean to grow naturally. We don’t need to use technology to be able to have a good fruit or vegetable. Now that you go to the store and see a produce that says “Organic” you should question it. What does Organic necessary mean? If you see an organic mango that says product of Peru, would it be organic? I’m sure some sort of technology that mango must have been through for it to survive and make it to the United States, therefore that mango is not organic. To me organic is being able to get produce from a local farm that does not use technology to make their fruits and vegetable grow faster. Source: http://www.ift.org/knowledge-center/learn-about-food-science/food-facts/about-fs-and-t.aspx Over the years I’ve read different articles regarding the implementation of technology in schools. Even politicians like Barack Obama have favor technology in schools all over America. Yet, there can be a controversy and people can question technology especially in schools like elementary schools and middle schools. On the other hand, there other people that believe that technology should be implement in schools. According to Ashley Wainwright “Technology helps the teachers prepare students for the real world environment. “ I myself believe that is true due to my own experiences. When I was in elementary school I was never introduced to technology. I soon moved up to middle school and that’s when I was first introduced to technology when I first created my first email. I remember being so excited to learn to send messages to my friends. Since than sending messages through email was a lot more fun to me than actually socializing with my friends in person. Later in high school I received my first phone at age fifteen and my first smart phone at age eighteen. I was extremely fascinated at technology at that point. I remember downloading my first application and being able to play so may games in just one small device. I do remember being so in shock after knowing I can video chat with my friends. Yet, data was so expensive that I would always use Gmail as an alternative device to be able to chat with my friends. Since then, I was more interested in technology than ever which lead to my interest in computer science. I strongly believe that if I would have been introduced to technology at a young age my computer skills would have been better and I would have been more prepared for my field. Many schools in America now have a variety of subject related to computing which most kids are required to take. There’s also a lot more technological program out there being offer for young student. Programs like Techbridge and IDTech. More and more funding is being given to schools and student are now programming at a young age. I myself and many others didn’t have the same opportunities like kids now and days because many students like myself came from poor communities were there wasn’t a lot of founding in the fields of technology and engineering. Some schools did provide desktop computers that were only available at certain times, but even than it was so hard to even use them since most computers were not up to date and would break easily. In conclusion, the importance of technology in schools is something parents should be aware of and understand why technology is so important for kids to know. There can be some negatives in the topic like how technology might lead to student losing their social skill, but that’s another topic that will talk about in the future.
Sources: http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/02/04/obama-to-announce-nearly-3-billion-in-education-technology-commitments https://www.idtech.com/courses/ - 25, 2017, from http://www.techbridgegirls.org -<http://www.securedgenetworks.com/blog/10-Reasons-Today-s-Students-NEED-Technology-in-the-Classroom>. |