本文摘要：A lot of “weird stuff” happens while driving, says Stanford University professor Chris Gerdes. His assertion goes to the heart of one of the problems associated with driverless cars. How can we expect a robot to deal with all the eventualities humans encounter on the road — whether unpredictable pedestrians, rogue traffic cones, or even dead plants blowing in the wind?斯坦福大学(Standford University)教授克里斯格迪斯(Chris Gerdes)回应，驾车的时候不会再次发生许多“奇奇怪怪的事”。

A lot of “weird stuff” happens while driving, says Stanford University professor Chris Gerdes. His assertion goes to the heart of one of the problems associated with driverless cars. How can we expect a robot to deal with all the eventualities humans encounter on the road — whether unpredictable pedestrians, rogue traffic cones, or even dead plants blowing in the wind?斯坦福大学(Standford University)教授克里斯格迪斯(Chris Gerdes)回应，驾车的时候不会再次发生许多“奇奇怪怪的事”。他的众说纷纭看清了与无人驾驶汽车有关的一个问题的核心。

我们怎么需要希望机器人处置人类在路上不会遭遇的所有突发事件——无论是无法预测的行人、胡乱放置的交通锥，还是随风刀剑的枯萎树枝？And what about so-called “algorithms of death”: can robots be trusted to choose the least bad outcome in the event of an unavoidable crash?还有就是所谓的“丧生算法”：面对不可避免的撞击，我们能信任机器人自由选择最自在的结果么？Autonomous cars are not only pushing a century-old industry to the forefront of innovation. They are also forcing us to face crucial questions about how much control we are willing to hand over to machines.自动汽车不仅把一个百年历史的产业推向了创意的前沿。它们还被迫我们面临至关重要的问题：我们不愿把多大的控制权转交机器？Cars that drive themselves may fundamentally reshape the way we view devices — from things that work or fail to a more nuanced picture of machines that can reason but also make mistakes.需要自动驾驶的汽车，或许不会彻底转变我们对设备的观点——从要么工作要么丢弃的东西，变为一种更加细致的情景：能推理小说也不会受罚的机器。“I don’t think we’ve seen a technology quite like this that mirrors what humans do in such an open-ended task,” says Prof Gerdes, director of Stanford’s automotive research laboratory. “It really is a place where we have a robot doing something which, up to this point, has been exclusively human.”When it comes to automated transport, the ethical questions are high stakes and fiendishly complicated.格迪斯教授是斯坦福大学汽车研究实验室的主任，他说道：“我指出我们还没见过类似于这样的技术，再现人类在这种开放式任务中的所作所为。

知道是让机器人做到某种目前几乎由人类做到的事。”就自动化交通运输而言，伦理问题既事关重大，也十分简单。

Established manufacturers including Daimler and BMW, as well as tech upstarts such as Tesla and Google, are known to have engaged experts such as Prof Gerdes to discuss ethical questions. Others, such as Fiat Chrysler, say they have engineers “exploring” the implications of autonomous driving.戴姆勒(Daimler)和宝马(BMW)等老牌制造商，以及特斯拉(Tesla)和谷歌(Google)等高科技富二代，据报都已请求了格迪斯教授这样的专家探究伦理问题。而菲亚特-克莱斯勒(Fiat Chrysler)等其他厂商回应，他们的工程技术人员在“探寻”自动驾驶的潜在影响。

General Motors says “an autonomous system for production is not close enough today to have answers to these questions, or even to know all the questions”. But Nissan, the Japanese group that with partner Renault is the world’s fourth-largest carmaker, has gone further, appointing a researcher at its Silicon Valley office dedicated to looking at these ethical issues. Melissa Cefkin, an anthropologist, is researching the interaction between autonomously driven vehicles and pedestrians and cyclists.通用汽车(General Motors)回应：“当今生产的自动系统相比之下足以掌控这些问题的答案，甚至还不理解所有问题。”不过，日产(Nissan)——与它的合作伙伴雷诺(Renault)通一起是全球第四大汽车制造商——回头得较为近，这家日资企业在其硅谷分公司任命了一名专职研究这些伦理问题的研究人员。人类学家梅利莎嬠夫金(Melissa Cefkin)正在研究自动驾驶汽车与行人和骑自行车的人之间的对话。

One layer of ethical questions for driverless cars involves scenarios and thought experiments. Daniel Hirsch, an automotive expert at PA Consulting, poses one: “A child runs on the street and the car has only two options — killing the child or killing the old, cancer-suffering driver.” The “correct” response to this situation in one country or culture might be different in another. It might even be illegal — both German and Swiss law say human lives cannot be weighed against one another.无人驾驶汽车伦理问题的一个层面牵涉到有所不同情景和思想实验。博安咨询(PA Consulting)汽车专家丹尼尔不出希(Daniel Hirsch)明确提出了一个情景：“一个孩子在街上运球，汽车只有两个选项：撞倒这名儿童，或者使车上的老年癌症患者遇难。”对这个情景，某一国家或文化的“准确”问在另一个国家或文化或许不会有所不同。这个问题本身有可能是非法的——德国和瑞士的法律都规定，无法较为人命孰轻孰重。

And what about the position of big business, such as insurers? “There’s a significant number of these cases in which the insurance company would decide differently — for instance, to them a handicapped child is more expensive than a handicapped elderly person due to remaining lifespan,” says Mr Hirsch.那么，保险公司等大企业的立场又如何？赫希回应：“在许多此类案例中，保险公司不会作出有所不同要求——比如，由于剩下的生命期有所不同，对它们来说残障儿童比残疾的老年人更加便宜。”While fully driverless cars remain some years away, highly automated cars with sophisticated crash-prevention technology are on the road today.Toyota wants to build cars that cannot be responsible for a crash, but most modern vehicles have some sort of active safety features. Such considerations are making carmakers take ethical questions seriously.尽管几乎无人驾驶的汽车仍是多年以后的事，但是不具备先进设备防撞技术的高度自动化汽车如今已上路行经。

丰田(Toyota)期望打造出不有可能为车祸负责管理的汽车，然而多数现代汽车都有某种主动安全性功能。这方面的考虑到令其汽车制造商严肃考虑到伦理问题。“There is an increasing awareness across all automakers that they have to deal with the psychological issues of these vehicles,” says Hans-Werner Kaas, senior partner at McKinsey, a consultancy. “They’re beefing up their skillset.”咨询公司麦肯锡(McKinsey)高级合伙人汉斯-维尔纳愠斯(Hans-Werner Kaas)回应：“在所有汽车制造商中，更加多的制造商认识到，它们必需处置与这些汽车有关的心理问题。

它们正在扩充各自的技能。”These moves underline that the industry is hypersensitive to safety following a series of high-profile recalls of millions of vehicles, meaning the race to adopt new technologies must be approached with caution.这些措施凸显，在牵涉到数百万辆汽车的一系列倍受注目的解任后——这些事件意味著必需慎重处置对新技术的竞相使用——汽车业对安全性问题十分脆弱。

Volvo, which has built its brand around safety, typifies that approach. Erik Coelingh, a senior technical leader for safety at the Swedish carmaker, says: “In practice, we have to make sure a car never gets into a situation where it has to make an impossible choice.”环绕安全性打造出其品牌的沃尔沃(Volvo)是这一方式的典型。埃里克克林(Erik Coelingh)是这家瑞典汽车制造商主管安全性的资深技术主管，他说道：“在实践中，我们必需保证汽车总有一天会陷于必需作出不有可能自由选择的境地。

”That means driving conservatively and observing traffic rules. To underscore the point, Volvo said in October it would accept full civil liability for accidents caused by its self-driving technology. But that is not the same as saying drivers can enter what one BMW executive calls “brain off” mode.这就意味著要激进地驾驶员汽车并遵从交通规则。为特别强调这一点，去年10月沃尔沃回应，将为其自动驾驶技术造成的事故分担全部民事赔偿金责任。不过，这与说道驾驶员可以转入宝马一名高管所称之为的“大脑重开”状态并不是一其实。

Facing the full ethical dilemma of autonomous cars is still some years away. California — one of the most forward-looking transport regulators — last month adopted draft rules that would require humans to stay in control of a vehicle at all times, as is written in the Vienna Convention observed by many European countries.人类要到好几年后才不会面临自动汽车的全部道德困境。上月，最不具前瞻性的交通监管机构之一加利福尼亚州通过了拒绝人类全程掌控汽车的规则草案——就像许多欧洲国家遵从的《维也纳公约》(Vienna Convention)那样。This means fully driverless cars would be “initially excluded from deployment” in California.这意味著几乎无人驾驶的汽车最初将会在加州上路。“We as a society have to decide whether we’re ready for a machine, with no driver intervention, to decide what should happen in a critical situation,” says Ian Robertson, BMW’s board member for sales and marketing. “And I’m not sure that we are yet ready for that.”宝马主管销售和市场营销的董事会成员伊恩圠伯逊(Ian Robertson)回应：“作为一个社会，我们必需要求我们否打算让机器在没驾驶员介入的情况下，在危急关头要求该怎么做。

我不认同我们已作好打算。

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