Abstract:
This paper critiques the idea of full autonomy, as illustrated
by Oxford University’s Robotcar. A fully autonomous
driverless car relies on no external inputs, including GPS and
solely learns from its environment using learning algorithms.
These cars decide when they drive, learn from human drivers
and bid for insurance in real time. Full autonomy is pitched as
a good end in itself, fixing human inadequacies and creating
safety and certainty by the elimination of human involvement.
Using the ACTIVE ethics framework, an ethical response to
the fully autonomous driverless cars is developed by
addressing autonomy, community, transparency, identity,
value and empathy. I suggest that the pursuit of full autonomy
does not recognise the essential importance of
interdependencies between humans and machines. The
removal of human involvement should require the driverless
car to be more connected with its environment, drawing all the
information it can from infrastructure, internet and other road
users. This requires a systemic view, which addresses systems
and relationships, which recognises the place of driverless
cars in a connected system, which is open to the study of
complex relationships, both networked and hierarchical.
