Your Self-Driving Car Will Be Programmed to Kill You--Deal With It

A recent survey shows that people want self-driving cars to be programmed to minimize casualties during a crash, even if it causes the death of the rider. Trouble is, the same survey shows that people don't actually want to ride in cars that are programmed this way. That's obviously a problem--and we're going to have to get over it. These are the kinds of thought experiments that are taught to Ethics 101 students during the first weeks of class--but now they're actually being applied to real life. Similar to the vexing trolley problem, manufacturers are struggling to come up with new rules for autonomous vehicles to guide them when a crash is inevitable, and the lives of people, both inside and outside of the car, are at stake.