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NEWS & TECHNOLOGY
In a crash, whose life
would you spare?
A SELF-DRIVING car is travelling
along a two-lane road when its
brakes fail. Should it stay in lane
and hit a pregnant woman,
a doctor and a criminal on a
pedestrian crossing, or swerve
and hit a barrier, killing the family regional clusters made similar
of four in the vehicle?
This derivative of the classic
Trolley Problem is the kind of
scenario that makes up the Moral
Machine experiment, an ethics
survey of millions of people from
233 countries and territories
around the world. Participants
were asked to consider different
scenarios in which those who
might be saved could be, say,
fit or fat, young or old, pets,
criminals or those with high-
status jobs. In all, 40 million
decisions were collected.
Overall, people preferred to
spare humans over animals
and younger over older people,
and tried to save the most lives.
The characters that people opted
to save least were dogs, followed
by criminals and then cats
(Nature, DOI: 10.1038/
s41586-018-0637-6).
Edmond Awad at the
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology and his colleagues
think these findings can inform
Computers
made from
cell skeletons
BUILDING a computer from the
skeleton that holds our cells together
could allow us to make machines
that are smaller and far more
energy efficient.
To encourage the development of
such computers, Andrew Adamatzky
at the University of the West of
England, UK, and his colleagues have
developed a theoretical foundation
for computing with cytoskeletons,
6 | NewScientist | 27 October 2018
of a preference to spare the young autonomous vehicles because
over the old, or to spare those
that would simply perpetuate
with high status. Decisions to save cultural biases that may not
reflect moral decisions.
humans ahead of cats and dogs
were less pronounced in a “The fact that there are some
policy-makers and the experts Southern cluster, which included cultural patterns should not
they may rely on as they devise Central and South America, and surprise us, but that has nothing
regulations for driverless cars. countries with French influence. to do with the fact that something
“This is one way to deliver what The preference there was to spare is right or wrong,” says ethicist
the public wants,” he says. women and fit people. H. Peter Steeves at DePaul
The team found that people in Many technology researchers University in Chicago. The instinct
and ethicists told New Scientist to save women and children, for
decisions. In an Eastern cluster, they thought the results shouldn’t example, is rooted in patriarchal
which included Islamic countries be used to set policy or design views of these groups having less
and eastern Asian nations that autonomy and therefore being
belong to the Confucianist Driverless cars may soon have to deserving of rescue, he says.
cultural group, there was less make life-and-death decisions We end up having these debates
because we anthropomorphise
AI, but ethics related to transport
isn’t just about self-driving
cars, says Joanna Bryson at the
University of Bath, UK. We already
make decisions and trade-offs
about road use that don’t always
result in the highest safety for the
greatest number of people. “SUVs
are twice as likely to kill anybody
you hit, and yet we’ve accepted
that into our culture,” she says.
Programming morality into
an algorithm may be impossible,
especially if coders and the
general public don’t act ethically
on the whole, says Steeves. “Then
the dream of finding the right
moral algorithm is just as absurd
as finding the right comedic
DAREKM101/GETTY parabola, or the right colour of
dance, or the right frequency for
spaghetti.” Chelsea Whyte ■
the protein-based scaffolds that give computers, called logic gates. Adamatzky. Tubulin and actin are also
cells their shape. Adamatzky and his colleagues less complex than DNA, making them
Cytoskeletons are constructed from have pulled all this together into easier materials to work with.
several different elements, including an overall concept for the first time But Ross King at the University of
25-nanometre-wide tubules made (arxiv. org/abs/1810.04981). Manchester, UK, who has worked on
from a protein called tubulin and They argue that cytoskeleton DNA computers, is sceptical. He thinks
6-nanometre-wide filaments made devices would have an advantage it may be difficult to get the signalling
from a protein called actin. These over ones made from DNA, another mechanisms of cytoskeleton
structures also distribute information form of biological calculator that computers to perform digital
in the form of patterns of atoms, some people think could supercharge computation at the atomic level.
electrons and ions, allowing computing. DNA is good at storage, He agrees with Adamatzky that
communication between parts of but poor at processing signals, says silicon’s days are numbered, however.
cells. By forcing these patterns to We have reached the point where a
combine in various ways, it may “Cytoskeleton devices could single supercomputer consumes the
be possible to perform simple be a more promising way same amount of energy as thousands
computations. This would essentially to supercharge computing of households, says King. “That’s not
reproduce the basic units of digital than those made of DNA” scalable.” Douglas Heaven ■