An Animated Lesson on the Ethical Dilemma of Self-Driving Cars

Dr. Patrick Lin, director of the Ethics & Emerging Sciences Group at California Polytechnic State University, provides an animated TED-Ed lesson on the ethical dilemma of self-driving cars and their need to make life or death decisions.

The lesson compares how humans instinctively react to dangerous situations while driving with the way a computer would be programmed to make those decisions. It also asks questions about what parameters should be used for the computers to make those decisions, and who should be setting those parameters.