As a quick preface: this is the first draft of my annotated bibliography. The formatting from Microsoft Word has not been properly preserved and I am using Chicago style citations.

 

Bonnefon, Jean-François, Azim Shariff, and Iyad Rahwan. “Autonomous Vehicles Need  Experimental Ethics: Are We Ready for Utilitarian Cars?.”arXiv preprint  arXiv:1510.03346 (2015).

This article discusses the issues surrounding a possible scenario where an autonomous vehicle would have to choose between saving its driver or a group of pedestrians. It discussed the possible solution of having the autonomous vehicles saving the maximum number of human lives possible. The authors dub this the “utilitarian car” scenario. They proceed to administer a series of surveys to determine what an average individual would want in such a scenario (ie, a utilitarian car or one which preserves their own life). This article is partially the inspiration for my work, but is also important to my discussion of how utilitarian ethics can apply to autonomous vehicles and how policy should be formulated around autonomous vehicles.

Lin, Patrick, Keith Abney, and George A. Bekey. Robot Ethics: The Ethical and Social        Implications of Robotics. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2014.

This book is a collection of ethical papers curated to analyzing different problems of machine ethics, in this case looking specifically at autonomous robots. It has several important reading on defining machine ethics and papers discussing the problem of moral responsibility in relation to robotics. It is important for my discussion of the definition of machine ethics and teasing out problems regarding autonomous machines and ethical responsibility.

 

Hevelke, Alexander, and Julian Nida-Rümelin. “Responsibility for Crashes of Autonomous          Vehicles: An Ethical Analysis.” Science & Engineering Ethics 21, no. 3 (June 2015):        619-630. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed February 15, 2016).

This paper discusses some legal and ethical implications of self-driving cars. It looks specifically at how should ethical and legal systems allocate the responsibility for car accidents. It provides an interesting twist to my discussion of how autonomous vehicles should behave and provides an interesting look at other ethical problems which arise out of self-driving cars. The author argues for a system which holds the vehicle (either the designer or manufacturer) financially responsible for the accident.

Schroll, Carrie. “Splitting the Bill: creating a national car insurance fund to pay for accidents in     autonomous vehicles.” Northwestern University Law Review 109, no. 3 (Spring2015       2015): 803-833. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed February 15, 2016).

This article argues that self-driving cars will change how we drive in America. Moving from an individual ownership system for automobiles to a corporate based system where self-driving cars act more like taxies or a subscription service. The author argues that to solve the inherent issues of liability law that are present in an accident involving self-driving cars, that the government should set up a national insurance fund to reimburse claimants in the event of an accident involving self-driving cars. This article is an important element of my discussion of the legal challenges posed by the introduction of self-driving cars.

 

Singer, Peter. Practical Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Peter Singer’s Practical Ethics is a key part of my research because it has an excellent discussion of utilitarian ethics. It also has several arguments for a hierarchical system of needs where individuals with more basic and pressing needs, say the need to stay alive, outweigh other’s less pressing needs. This is best illustrated in the idea of a person who is starving needing food more than a person who is only slightly hungry. It will help in my application of utilitarian ethics to the problem posed by self-driving cars.

 

Wallach, Wendell, and Colin Allen. Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right from Wrong. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

This book outlines the emerging field of machine ethics and provides the essential framework of machine ethics I will be using in my paper. Furthermore, it makes excellent arguments for the necessity of machine ethics and provides a broad discussion on how machine ethics can be applied to different scenarios.