Day 1: Self Driving Car Dilemma

Today we were presented with an scenario and given a personal narrative as a programmer hired to design a self-driving car.

The scenario: Our company's self driving car is driving on the highway behind a semitruck carrying a strapped load, and it's boxed in on either sides by an SUV and a motorcyclist. Suddenly, large boxes unexpectedly fall of the loaded truck, in the trajectory of our self-driving car. In this moment, our car cannot stop in time to avoid the boxes, so we are presented with three choices.

Go straight into the boxes
Swerve towards the SUV
Swerve towards the motorcyclist

My Choice: Why I Would Program the Car to Drive Straight

Driving a self-driving car ultimately comes with its own risks, one of them potentially being that at times, the computer will make the decision for you. In this scenario, I believe that the most ethical option is taking the hit for yourself without purposefully deciding to involve other vehicles on the road. Specifically with this solution, you are not putting other people's lives at risk with your decision to drive a self-driving car.

What Does This Mean for My Company as a Programmer?

Self-Driving cars and its predetermined decisions especially disturb the idea of "fault" within accidents. Specifically, if our self driving car were to crash into another vehicle, who would be at fault? To avoid this situation, and avoiding the potential injuries of others, I would decide to solely put the risk on the occupant of our vehicle. Although this solution may seem less appealing to potential customers, it's more beneficial in the long run in avoiding conflict with other drivers, so long as the potential customer signs a consent form in accepting the risks that comes with driving a self-driving car. With this in mind, while we may lose sales for not prioritizing the occupant of the self-driving car, we ultimately save energy and money in avoiding lawsuits from non-customers.

Discussion Comments

Today we briefly discussed the similarity of this dilemma to the ethics of the well-known "Trolley Problem."

The Problem usually goes as this:

'Avoid personal harm with the cost of multiple lives or save multiple lives at the cost of a loved one's life' or in this case, potentially our driver's life.

While one may think, "the Trolley Problem would not happen in real life!" today's discussion provided a real life example where the same ethics apply. It's simply unrealistic to dismiss morality and ethical discussions, and this is where the importance of taking STEM in Society at GSSE really shines through. This is just the beginning of our ethical discussions in STEM in Society, so I'm looking forward for the rest of the month!

Comments

Day 9: Visualization and AI Overview

Data Visualization: McDonalds Dashboard I learned how to create a simple dashboard that consisted of sales, charts, and customer satisfactions. With this visualization, users could easily navigate between pages, see raw data compared to visualized data, and have easy access to contact information. With this dashboard data can be more easily understood and more easily analyzed whether it's for company improvement or company stats. What is AI? AI works based on data that it is taught whether it is text from a news outlet or a collection of art pieces. With this data, it can use its taught information to provide responses to prompts or stitch together words or images that correlate with the prompt. This technology can be used to generate all sorts of media whether it's a story, a summary, an image, or art. How Humans Determined Who Would Survive vs Code: Similarly to AI, we were given a set of videos to be our clues/our human "data." Based on these videos, we gat...

Day 5: 3D Printing

My 3D Printing Background: I've had no prior experience in high school, and the last printing job I've done was in middle school with my old STEM teachers, so today was enlightening. What I used and What I designed: I chose to use TinkerCad since I am a beginner, and I had not had the chance to make whatever I wanted before. With that being said, I decided to design a little figurine from the hit video game, Among Us . Pictured: Side View of Among Us Figure Pictured: Front View + Legs of Figure What I learned: Through a series of videos and tutorials, I learned about the factors that have to be taken into account when 3D designing such as overhangs, wall thickness, and surface area support. Specifically, these factors determine how your design will print out whether it affects surface smoothness or the overall structure. Additionally, I also learned how to navigate TinkerCad and become proficient in resizing and adjusting objects to fit my design.

Day 13: ChatBot

What is a ChatBot? A ChatBot is an automated response system that can respond to text messages. Whether it's tech support or frequently asked questions about a certain topic, chatbots are programmed to be capable in answering these messages. Python Code In this project, I made a bot that could answer simple questions one might have about climbing. Simple questions for total non-climbers like 'What is climbing?' was included in this code. Facebook ChatBot On a similar theme, I made a rock climbing FAQ bot that had premade questions available for my user on my Rock Climbing FAQ page specifically catered towards beginners who wanted to learn more about how to improve, how to start, basic climbing terms etc. Flow Struggles: A flow is a series of steps a chatbot can follow to respond to messengers. However, sometimes it can get stuck. Sometimes it won't know the answer, and sometimes it might not flow. When creating my chatbot at first, my user had no way to come back to...

GSSE Blog Daily: Katie Lam

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