In an Autonomous Vehicle (AV) crash, should AI save the young instead of the elderly? Germany banned this, but a pragmatist asks: why not let algorithms choose based on age?

Synopsis: On Wednesdays, The Straits Times takes a hard look at Singapore's social issues of the day with guests.

Traffic accidents in Singapore have hit a 10-year high. Every day, motorists are caught speeding, running red lights, and looking at their phones. The proposed solution is radical: take the steering wheel away from humans and hand it entirely to Artificial Intelligence.

But as Singapore drafts the legal framework to roll out autonomous vehicles (AVs), where are the dangerous lines we are crossing? From programming algorithms to decide who lives and dies in a split-second crash, to the terrifying threat of a hacked network, are we actually ready to surrender our safety to a machine we don't fully understand?

In this episode, ST assistant podcast editor Lynda Hong sits down with the man building the robot's brain: Professor Marcelo Ang from the Advanced Robotics Centre at the NUS Mechanical Engineering Department, a researcher who first tested an AV in 2013. 

They debate the ethics of the trolley problem about picking who to collide with in an unavoidable crash, the liabilities in the event of a driverless car crash, and the brutal reality awaiting thousands of middle-aged drivers whose jobs are about to be automated.  

Highlights (click/tap above):

2:47 Tesla vs. true driverless - the different levels of self-driving 

9:04 The "Guardian Angel" - an underlying physics algorithm that overrides bad AI decisions

11:48 Why level 3 autonomous driving can be dangerous

14:20 Should the algorithm hit the 80-year-old or the 10-year-old in an unavoidable crash

23:55 The hardest engineering challenge: Predicting irrational human behaviour

Read ST’s Opinion section: https://str.sg/w7sH

Follow Lynda Hong on LinkedIn: https://str.sg/Gm2v

Host: Lynda Hong (lyndahong@sph.com.sg) 

Produced and edited by: Teo Tong Kai

Executive producers: Danson Cheong and Lynda Hong

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