Researchers have validated a new technique that helps driverless cars to make “moral” decisions.
The method tests how people judge the morality of driving decisions by sharing a variety of traffic scenarios with test subjects, and then having the test subjects answer a series of questions about moral acceptability and various aspects of what took place in each scenario.
Agent Deed Consequence model
The technique developed by researchers from North Carolina State University is based on the Agent Deed Consequence model, which posits that people take three things into account when making a moral judgment: the agent, which is the character or intent of the person who is doing something; the deed, or what is being done; and the consequence, or the outcome that results from the deed.
“Very few people set out to cause an accident or hurt other people on the road,” says Veljko Dubljević, corresponding author of the study and a professor in the Science, Technology & Society program at North Carolina State University.
“Accidents often stem from low-stakes decisions, such as whether to go five miles over the speed limit or make a rolling stop at a stop sign. How do we make these decisions? And what constitutes a moral decision when we’re behind the wheel? We needed to find a way to collect quantifiable data on this, because that sort of data is necessary if we want to train autonomous vehicles to make moral decisions.”
Ethical implications of traffic decision-making
The researchers enlisted 274 study participants with advanced degrees in philosophy for this validation study. The researchers shared driving scenarios with the study participants and asked them about the morality of the decisions that drivers made in each scenario. The researchers also used a validated measure to assess the study participants’ ethical frameworks, according to a press release.
The study addresses the ethical implications of traffic decision-making in the context of autonomous vehicles (AVs).
Researchers pointed out that while much of the existing research has focused on high-stakes moral dilemmas, such as those exemplified by the trolley problem, everyday traffic situations—characterized by mundane, low-stakes decisions—remain underexplored.
Titled “Morality on the road: the ADC model in low-stakes traffic vignettes,” the paper empirically investigates the applicability of the Agent-Deed-Consequences (ADC) model in the moral judgment of low-stakes traffic scenarios.
“Using a vignette approach, we surveyed professional philosophers to examine how their moral judgments are influenced by the character of the driver (Agent), their adherence to traffic rules (Deed), and the outcomes of their actions (Consequences),” said researchers.
Each component of ADC model influences moral judgment
The study’s findings support the primary hypothesis that each component of the ADC model significantly influences moral judgment, with positive valences in agents, deeds, and consequences leading to greater moral acceptability, according to researchers.
Dubljević highlighted that different philosophers subscribe to different schools of thought regarding what constitutes moral decision-making as utilitarians approach moral problems very differently from deontologists who are very focused on rules.
“In theory, because different schools of thought approach morality differently, results on what constituted moral behavior should have varied depending on which framework different philosophers used,” said Dubljević.
“What was exciting here is that our findings were consistent across the board. Utilitarians, deontologists, virtue ethicists – whatever their school of thought, they all reached the same conclusions regarding moral decision-making in the context of driving. That means we can generalize the findings,” added Dubljević.