Consider all stakeholders

If you’re a cat, I have some bad news. In the millions of driverless car dilemmas we analyzed in the Moral Machine experiment, cats were the most sacrificed category of road users. Dogs were sacrificed often, but less often than cats. One can only speculate about the reasons.

Of course, it is possible that other animals, say squirrels, would be dispensed with even more often than cats by survey participants. But we did not have squirrels in the survey. This raises an important, broader point about the limitations of surveys: You do not learn answers to questions you do not ask. And no survey is comprehensive enough to encompass all relevant questions, and all relevant stakeholders.

Still, while it is very difficult to consider all stakeholders, one can strive towards this ideal. Like all complex technologies, AI systems have a wide footprint, whether it comes to their production, training, or deployment. Continuously considering all of those potentially impacted by the technology allows us to make considered judgments about the risks and benefits.

References

• Awad, E. et al. The Moral Machine experiment. Nature 563, 59–64 (2018).