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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from Explore Bristol Research, http://research-information.bristol.ac.uk Author: Keeling, Geoff Title: The Ethics of Automated Vehicles General rights Access to the thesis is subject to the Creative Commons Attribution - NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 International Public License. A copy of this may be found at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode This license sets out your rights and the restrictions that apply to your access to the thesis so it is important you read this before proceeding. Take down policy Some pages of this thesis may have been removed for copyright restrictions prior to having it been deposited in Explore Bristol Research. However, if you have discovered material within the thesis that you consider to be unlawful e.g. breaches of copyright (either yours or that of a third party) or any other law, including but not limited to those relating to patent, trademark, confidentiality, data protection, obscenity, defamation, libel, then please contact [email protected] and include the following information in your message: •Your contact details •Bibliographic details for the item, including a URL •An outline nature of the complaint Your claim will be investigated and, where appropriate, the item in question will be removed from public view as soon as possible. The Ethics of Automated Vehicles Geoff Keeling A dissertation submitted to the University of Bristol in accordance with the requirements for award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts. April 2020 Word Count: 69,872 1 2 Abstract My thesis is about the morality of automated vehicle (AV) decisions. What is the relevance of the trolley problem to AV decisions? What is the morally right method for AVs to distribute harms or risks of harm between the parties in collisions? Who is morally responsible for harm caused in collisions? How does the risk of harm to road-users trade-off against the AV’s prudential goal of getting to its destination in reasonable time? What is the morally right amount of caution for AVs to exercise when uncertain about the classification of proximate objects? I will answer these questions by developing a deontological account of permissible killing for AVs and a deontological account of permissible risk-imposition. I also argue against some of the rival answers to these questions; and in doing so, attempt to show that my view does a better job than its rivals at capturing our considered moral judgements. The view I defend holds that the AV is morally permitted to kill or harm a road- user in an unavoidable collision if, and only if, and because, its passenger is morally permitted to kill or harm that road-user in self-defence. In normal driving, the AV is morally required to moderate its speed so that it can safely negotiate modally close but improbable what if cases such as children running out into the road. Here is the plan. Chapter 1 is a literature review. Chapter 2 defends my use of trolley cases. Chapters 3 and 4 argue against two rival non-consequentialist views, Filippo Santoni de Sio’s (2017) legal-philosophical view and Derek Leben’s (2017) Rawlsian view. Chapter 5 presents my deontological theory. Chapter 6 presents my account of risk-imposition, and develops an illustrative formal decision-procedure for a simple mundane road-traffic scenario modelled as a Markov Decision Process. 3 4 Acknowledgements I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to my supervisors, Richard Pettigrew and Brad Hooker, for their kindness and encouragement at every stage of my academic development. I have learned so much from these two. I cannot thank them enough. I am also deeply grateful to Michael Hauskeller for his supervision and mentoring in the early stages of the PhD; and to Rune Nyrup, who has supervised me since June 2019 at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence in Cambridge. I am immensely fortunate to have had such wonderful mentors throughout my PhD. I am lucky to have some amazing friends. Farbod Akhlaghi-Ghaffarokh has pushed my dialectical frontier further than I could have imagined; and has been a constant source of inspiration and friendship. Nick Axten reminds me each time we talk that philosophy begins in wonder. In addition, I owe so much to Yousuf Bhyat, Chris Burr, Pavan Chaggar, Leia Hopf, Daniel Jones, Isaac Kean, Tim Keeling, Aadil Kurji, Arsham Nejad Kourki, Niall Paterson, and Shaun Stanley. Bristol’s graduate community has also been brilliant. In particular, thanks to Lize Alberts, Alejandra Casas Munoz, Nemo D’Qrill, Elle Garner, Lucy James, Jack Lane, Jed Martin, Nick Ormrod, Gareth Pearce, João Pinheiro, Nicos Stylianou, Demyan Vakhrameev, Jacqui Wallis, James Wilson, Aiden Woodcock, and Kieran Woods. I have some wonderful friends and colleagues in the ethics of automated vehicles. In particular, I must thank Katie Evans, Nick Evans, Filippo Santoni de Sio, Noah Goodall, Jeff Gurney, Johannes Himmelreich, Jamie Hodsdon, Ryan Jenkins, Derek Leben, Sven Nyholm, Pamela Robinson, Sarah Thornton, Carole Voulgaris, and Damian Williams. I have learned so much from discussions with these people and from their comments on my work. I owe special thanks to Noah, Nick, and Pamela for inviting me to present at the Automated Vehicles Symposium in San Francisco in 2018 and in Orlando in 2019. I have also benefited from many fruitful conversations with Kevin Baum, Georg Borges, Matt Clark, Juan Durán, Thomas Grote, Lauren Holt, Abhishek Mishra, Will McNeill, Brent Mittelstadt, Farzad Nozarian, Duncan Purves, Eva Schmidt, Sandra Wachter and Fiona Woollard. The Faculty in the Department of Philosophy at Bristol have been amazing. I owe special thanks to Chris Bertram and Jason Konek. But I have learned so much 5 from conversations, questions, and comments from Catrin Campbell-Moore, Tzu Chien Tho, Ana Cretu, Josh Habgood-Coote, Max Jones, James Ladyman, Karim Thébault, Martin Sticker, Samir Okasha, and Alan Wilson. I am also eternally grateful to Tamar Hodos from the Archaeology and Anthropology Department for the interest that she has taken in my career and for so much helpful advice. Thanks must also go to the South, West, and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership for the Arts and Humanities Research Council Studentship that funded this venture. Last, I thank my family. In his book Ideal Code, Real World, Brad says that ‘my parents openly acknowledged that moral projects are often trying. Raising a son fascinated by a subject at once so difficult and emotionally charged as moral philosophy served as a case in point’ (Hooker 2000: viii). For their sins, my parents have raised two sons that are fascinated by moral philosophy. This thesis is for my mother, Dr Julie Keeling, the person of whom I am most proud; and no doubt the person who is most proud of me. Thank you for everything. You are brilliant. 6 Author’s Declaration I declare that the work in this dissertation was carried out in accordance with the requirements of the University's Regulations and Code of Practice for Research Degree Programmes and that it has not been submitted for any other academic award. Except where indicated by specific reference in the text, the work is the candidate's own work. Work done in collaboration with, or with the assistance of, others, is indicated as such. Any views expressed in the dissertation are those of the author. SIGNED: ............................................................. DATE: .......................... 7 8 Publications In line with Annex 5 of the Regulations and Code of Practice for Research Degree Programmes, some material in this thesis is reprinted in the following publications: Keeling, G. Legal Necessity, Pareto Efficiency & Justified Killing in Autonomous Vehicle Collisions. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21, 413–427 (2018). Keeling G. Against Leben’s Rawlsian Collision Algorithm for Autonomous Vehicles. In: Vincent Müller (ed). Philosophy and Theory of Artificial Intelligence 2017. PT-AI 2017. SAPERE, vol 44. Springer, Cham (2018). Keeling, G. Why Trolley Problems Matter for the Ethics of Automated Vehicles. Science and Engineering Ethics 26, 293–307 (2020). Keeling, G. Automated Vehicles and the Ethics of Classification. In: Ryan Jenkins, Tomas Hribek and David Cerny (eds.). Autonomous Vehicle Ethics: Beyond the Trolley Problem. Oxford University Press (Accepted). Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 6 are ‘publication chapters’, in that substantial content from these chapters features in the above publications. Footnotes at the start of these chapters detail which publications the chapters correspond to. Chapters 1 and 5 are ‘conventional chapters’, in the sense that these chapters are unpublished. 9 10 Contents 1. The Ethics of Automated Vehicles ..........................................................................15 1.1. Preliminaries .........................................................................................................16 1.2. The Moral Design Problem ..............................................................................17 1.2.1. Self-Interest Theory ....................................................................................19 1.2.2. Utilitarianism ................................................................................................22 1.2.3. Contractarianism ..........................................................................................25 1.2.4. Contractualism .............................................................................................27