Can the question of morality and self-driving cars be solved through an algorithm?

Utilitarianism and deontology.

Two words that many don’t know the meaning behind, yet we’ll have to side with one or the other sooner than later. And the topic? Self-driving cars. Automated vehicles are the world’s next big phenomenon, with Google touting that it’s self-driving vehicles, in years of testing, have only been in 11 minor incidents, which were all mostly due to human error.

That’s a staggering figure. In six years of testing, only a handful of minor accidents? Imagine all of the lives we could save with this self-driving technology. One thing’s for certain, self-driving software is much more attentive to the road than the human eye will ever be.

The technology is jaw-dropping, and so are the figures. But, that’s not the only factor we need to look at before letting self-driving cars run a large portion of our lives. After all, in the event of an incident, the self-driving car would rather drive off a cliff, killing one person, over driving into oncoming traffic, causing multiple casualties. that could involve multiple lives. It would rather sacrifice one life, the person in the driver’s seat, than potentially harm or kill multiple lives.

It’s called the trolley problem. Should you kill one life to save five others or should you kill six lives to save one? The solution for most is obvious: one must die to save five others–it’s the most logical solution with the best possible outcome. But, it’s not that easy. Change up the variables–what if that one person was your child? It gets much more complicated.

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“Ultimately, this problem devolves into a choice between utilitarianism and deontology,” said UAB alumnus Ameen Barghi. “Utilitarianism tells us that we should always do what will produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people,” he explained. In that case, allowing one to die in place of the lives of five others is the solution. But, then again, maybe not.

Deontology says that “some values are simply categorically always true,” Barghi said. “For example, murder is always wrong, and we should never do it. Even if shifting the trolley will save five lives, we shouldn’t do it because we would be actively killing one,” Barghi said.

In other words, our self-driving cars should not be programmed to actively decide whether to sacrifice one person for five others, as they are told to do now. The problem goes even deeper, though. The car isn’t the one that would take your life in this hypothetical situation. No, the car is immoral, the software is immoral. Neither is inherently good or evil. “It just runs programs,” Ben and Crosby said in comedy sci-fi film Short Circuit.

I’m certain we can all agree on that.

Therefore, the death would be on the hands of the person who pushed the idea of having it in self-driving cars. That person certainly wouldn’t be prosecuted, but by these standards, it would be on his or her conscience. But, I can guarantee that that person isn’t out to purposely kill others with self-driving technology. No, that person is trying to make our lives better by reducing the number of fatalities in the world related to automobile accidents. Not only that, but said person is also trying to reduce time on the road and make it more efficient.

So, the problem doesn’t just lay on that person’s hands, but it goes even deeper than that.

The real question is, can morality be solved by a simple math equation or algorithm?

source: University of Alabama at Birmingham

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Google will end support for Android Developer Tools in Eclipse later this year

Google yesterday took to its Android Developers Blog to announce that it would be ending all development and support for the Android Developer Tools (ADT) in Eclipse. The search giant plans on focusing its efforts on its own IDE, Android Studio. “This specifically includes the Eclipse ADT plugin and Android Ant build system,” Google says.

While this is certainly hard news to hear, especially if Eclipse was your go-to platform for Android, Google has put together a handy guide to migrating your Android projects and source code from Eclipse into Android Studio 1.3. It’s an easy process, and should only take you a few minutes, if you’re making the jump.

Google will continue to support Eclipse until the end of the year. In the meantime, they’re hard at work migrating the rest of their standalone performance tools, such as DDMS and Trace Viewer, over to Android Studio in addition to building better support for the Android NDK in the IDE.

For more info and a guide on how to switch your projects from Eclipse to Android Studio, hit the source link below.

source: Android Developers Blog

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You can now check your Project Fi invite’s status

Still waiting for your invite to join Project Fi? Google has launched a way to check the status of your invite. Most people are seeing 3-4 weeks as the estimated wait for an invite while a few are noticing a longer wait of 4-8 weeks. Google did note that everyone would have an invite by mid-summer. So things actually seem to be on schedule. Even after getting an invite, people will have to decide whether or not spending hundreds of dollars on the Nexus 6 is worth it. Then, and only then, they can try Google’s new wireless service throughout the United States.

You can check your invite’s status by heading over to Project Fi’s signup page.

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Google will improve the quality of mobile ads by blocking accidental clicks

According to a new report, over 50% of advertisement clicks on all devices are accidental. In order to reduce this number, Google has announced that it will improve the click quality of mobile ads by automatically blocking accidental clicks on several occasions.

The search engine giant also stated that it will enforce a delay between the time a user clicks an ad and when it actually opens to detect if the click was intentional or accidental. Developers will no longer have the ability to force advertisements upon users.

These new changes will allow users to fully enjoy the applications they are using without being catapulted to another page or to the Play Store. Advertisers will see improved conversion rates and reduced overall costs as a result of these changes.

What do you think of thee changes? Be sure to let us know your thoughts in the comments section down below.

Source: Google

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