Daily Answer Writing GS 4 (Ethics and Human Interface)

Subject: GS 4

Syllabus: Ethics and Human Interface

Questions

1. Why do ethics matter for autonomous cars? Discuss the relationship between public health, ethics and autonomous vehicles. (150 Words, 10 Marks)
2. Briefly discuss a few of the biggest moral dilemmas that science faces today. (150 words, 10 Marks) 

Model Structure 

1. Why do ethics matter for autonomous cars? Discuss the relationship between public health, ethics and autonomous vehicles.
   (150 words, 10 Marks) 

Introduction 

• Autonomous cars (AC) are likely to be much safer than those operated by humans, but they won’t be perfect, as driving involves taking calculated risks, and more so because they will be sharing roads with humans. The manner in which these risks ought to be handled by AC raises many ethical questions.

Main Body 

• Which risks should the car take?
  • Eg 1. When a crash becomes inevitable, how should the car decide between the lives of its passengers and the lives of pedestrians?
  • Eg 2. Who should the car harm if it finds itself in one of the unavoidable situations? a child riding a cycle or an SUV carrying five people. Hitting the cycle might result in the death of the child. But hitting an SUV might endanger five lives.
• The decision to take a particular risk has been made by the designer long before the accident takes place. Hence, unlike a normal accident, which involves an instinctual panic move with no malice, accidents done by ACs will be seen as a premeditated murder.
• There is no unanimity on the nature of the moral code the AC should follow.
• In future, if a death happens because of AC, who do we hold liable for compensation - the owner, the car company, or no one?
• Introduction of ACs will result in large-scale job losses, which need to be addressed. All the low-skilled jobs will disappear, and will worsen the inequality even further.

Conclusion 

• The introduction of autonomous vehicles would result in a significant reduction of traffic congestion, pollution, accidents and fatalities, and is seen as one of the most important public health advances this century, but is fraught with ethical issues which must be addressed comprehensively.

2. Briefly discuss a few of the biggest moral dilemmas that science faces today. (150 words, 10 Marks) 

Model Structure 

Genetic engineering:

• Are we playing God by altering the genetic codes?
  • Designer babies - Should the rich parents be given this control over their baby? This would perpetuate existing genetic divides based on class, it could also start weeding out many of the traits that truly make an individual and community successful in favour of more superficial ones. It also creates a social dichotomy that would reinstate lines of prejudice in society.
  • There is a high risk of bio-contamination, which can threaten the existence of mankind. For instance, accidentally a mutated strain of harmful bacteria can escape the lab, wreaking havoc on mankind. This can be viewed as a new category of weapons of mass destruction.
  • GMOs reduce long-term biodiversity, threatening the existence of and polluting the rest of the existing varieties.
  • But given the numerous benefits of genetic engineering, it becomes a challenge to determine where to draw the line.

Artificial Intelligence:

• Might create large scale unemployment and inequality
• How do we distribute the wealth created by machines?
• Smartest species rules the planet. If machines become smarter than humans, they might take over the world, threatening our dominance and wellbeing.

Data collection and privacy:

• The principles of privacy and data protection must be balanced against additional societal values such as public health, national security and law enforcement, environmental protection, and economic efficiency.

Geo-engineering: 

• No national or international governance body for regulating the geoengineering experiments.
• The scale of intervention is huge and might result in permanently changing the nature of the planet.
• It can affect the lives of all humans, and many of them might not have given consent to take part in the experiment.

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