The classic trolley problem, where the test taker has to decide whether to save one or five hostages from being run over. Or in other words, who, or how many to sacrifice?
The question was designed for training humans’ moral reasoning, but ever wondered how an artificial intelligence (AI) would respond to it?
Yes, our artificial pal here decided the utilitarian way, sacrificing the few, saving more lives. But, as the AI questioned back, the actual root of the problem: Why do we always construct such dilemmas?
Letting a trolley roll over humans sounds so cruel; let’s propose a sweeter scenario.
Six children asking you for candies; you have only five pieces… You either give five and leave one child crying, or you give none and make all six of them teary.
No bloodshed, no dismembered limbs, but that is still the cruel miniature version of our society. There is never a way to satisfy all sides.
Like my bald lecturer explained how democracy functions.
- 600 voters voted for Candidate X; another 400 voted for Candidate Y.
- X was elected because we follow the majority.
- But the choice of the 400 voters? Disregarded in the end.
That’s how human society works. There are too many of us to either come out with contrasting demands, or to compete for the limited resources when the demands are similar.
A 200-bed hospital flooded by 500 patients, or one job vacancy to be competed for by 20 fresh graduates, even the winning of one Olympic gold medal was built on the defeating tears from hundreds of athletes competing in the same sport.
There is hardly a solution that satisfies all. If it seems to exist, it usually involves compromising, a scaled-down version of the initial demands.
Even AI has yet to crack the basic Trolley Problem, not to mention the other complicated variations of it, or even the harsher real-world dilemmas.
Is it all hopeless? There seems to be no ultimate solution to any dilemma. Equal rights, elections, subsidies, and many more, you name it.
But that is also the initial purpose of the Trolley Problem: to continue stimulating our minds to improvise better endings. And now with more advanced AI, who knows if we could have a breakthrough soon?
Hoh Chee Meng is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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